Out of 250GB I Have 57GB In Hidden Files

[dn325ci]

My 500GB main drive only has 250GB in use, yet of the 250GB, 57GB is hidden files, which sounds enormous to me. This is an old iMac but it's running Lion. I've never deleted hidden files, and I see there are some applications to easily view them. But how do I know which ones are OK to delete?

Thanks!

 

[Intell]

Most hidden files are hidden for a reason and should not be disturbed.

 

[dn325ci]

Most hidden files are hidden for a reason and should not be disturbed.

I'm in general agreement. I'm reacting to 57GB, which seems like an extreme number. Do you have 57GB of hidden files?

 

[ian.maffett]

Maybe Omnidisk can help you decipher what's what.

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

 

[dn325ci]

Maybe Omnidisk can help you decipher what's what.

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/

Thanks Ian. I will try that one when I get home.

 

[Sc00tr]

Yea that is a lot of files. You should not have any where near that many.

Try downloading OnyX and run Mac's daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts (which don't on their own if you shut down your Mac at night), and clear out log files and system caches.

You can also use CCleaner

Also check the permissions from disk utility.

 

[fat jez]

have you turned on time machine? If you can't connect to a time capsule, it creates local backups instead, which can take up a lot of space. You can see the space for these in about this mac. It can be disabled with a terminal command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

 

[dn325ci]

have you turned on time machine? If you can't connect to a time capsule, it creates local backups instead, which can take up a lot of space. You can see the space for these in about this mac. It can be disabled with a terminal command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

In About This Mac, it shows up in the yellow "Other" section, not the purple "Backups" section. Curious.

 

[dn325ci]

Omnisweeper is showing that 50.5GB of the 57GB is in Users/Don/Library/Application Support/MobileSync. Is that idevice backups? We have 3 iPhones and 4 iPads in our household, along with a few iPods. Is it OK to delete these if I don't want them? I switched to a new iMac and I'm just trying to clean this old one off. Thanks guys!

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Omnisweeper is showing that 50.5GB of the 57GB is in Users/Don/Library/Application Support/MobileSync. Is that idevice backups? We have 3 iPhones and 4 iPads in our household, along with a few iPods. Is it OK to delete these if I don't want them? I switched to a new iMac and I'm just trying to clean this old one off. Thanks guys!

Sheesh, I even missed a folder: Users/Don/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup