Out of hard drive space... Where did it go?!?!

[NonLinearEdits]

I have absolutely no personal files on my hard drive at all... I use my macbook pro for FCP alone, capture scratch, render files and source video is all on an external hard drive... Yet my hard drive has about 18gb free... I cleared off all the finish projects and got 30gb out of it... where the heck did all the space go? I even went as far as to delete Logic Pro and everything in order to free up space and it was a minimal gain... I can the sudo command for the memory and here's what happened:

3.5M /.fseventsd
141M /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
3.5G /Applications
3.9M /bin
0B /cores
4.5K /dev
1.0K /home
61G /Library
1.0K /net
0B /Network
2.9G /private
2.7M /sbin
2.6G /System
42G /Users
590M /usr
4.0K /Volumes
115G /

Any help? Why is my library so jacked up?!?!

 

[jdavtz]

It might be Lion's new thing where it creates a time machine backup even when you're not connected to an external disk. I haven't looked into the details of it.

 

[paulsalter]

go to the about this mac from the apple logo
go into more info

from here look at the storage button, if its the auto backups you should see a large amount of storage used by backups

 

[Hansr]

I have absolutely no personal files on my hard drive at all... I use my macbook pro for FCP alone, capture scratch, render files and source video is all on an external hard drive... Yet my hard drive has about 18gb free... I cleared off all the finish projects and got 30gb out of it... where the heck did all the space go? I even went as far as to delete Logic Pro and everything in order to free up space and it was a minimal gain... I can the sudo command for the memory and here's what happened:

3.5M /.fseventsd
141M /.Spotlight-V100
0B /.Trashes
0B /.vol
3.5G /Applications
3.9M /bin
0B /cores
4.5K /dev
1.0K /home
61G /Library
1.0K /net
0B /Network
2.9G /private
2.7M /sbin
2.6G /System
42G /Users
590M /usr
4.0K /Volumes
115G /

Any help? Why is my library so jacked up?!?!

Check your logs. If there is a renegate process writing crap to the logs every second they will grow quite quickly.

 

[blastoboy1000]

MobileBackups acts as a separate volume (\Volumes\MobileBackups), although I'm not entirely sure how it works / where it's stored on the Mac HD volume, but I don't think it's within the Library. Anyways, you should definitely check out a free program called OmniDiskSweeper (http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/). It goes through your whole hard drive and does what you did for your top level directories, so you can see exactly what's taking up space where.

If it does turn out to be an issue with your backups, you can always disable MobileBackups (even if you use Time Machine, it just will only back up when the TM disk is plugged in, I believe), by running this terminal command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

This will also delete any local backups you have, so you don't have to go fishing around for them.

EDIT: I also see that you have 115 GB of data chilling in /. I suppose it's likely then that some of that could be coming from MobileBackups, which exists under /Volumes/, although the OmniDiskSweeper diagnosis should still be pretty interesting. I always find new stuff to delete when I run it on my computer...

 

[NonLinearEdits]

It might be Lion's new thing where it creates a time machine backup even when you're not connected to an external disk. I haven't looked into the details of it.

I don't have Lion on that macbook pro... I wasn't sure how much I was going to like lion so I only put it on my regular macbook for now lol.

 

[NonLinearEdits]

go to the about this mac from the apple logo
go into more info

from here look at the storage button, if its the auto backups you should see a large amount of storage used by backups

MobileBackups acts as a separate volume (\Volumes\MobileBackups), although I'm not entirely sure how it works / where it's stored on the Mac HD volume, but I don't think it's within the Library. Anyways, you should definitely check out a free program called OmniDiskSweeper (http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/). It goes through your whole hard drive and does what you did for your top level directories, so you can see exactly what's taking up space where.

If it does turn out to be an issue with your backups, you can always disable MobileBackups (even if you use Time Machine, it just will only back up when the TM disk is plugged in, I believe), by running this terminal command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

This will also delete any local backups you have, so you don't have to go fishing around for them.

EDIT: I also see that you have 115 GB of data chilling in /. I suppose it's likely then that some of that could be coming from MobileBackups, which exists under /Volumes/, although the OmniDiskSweeper diagnosis should still be pretty interesting. I always find new stuff to delete when I run it on my computer...

So if I find out that it's the backups, it's safe to clear all that out right? This MBP was my first mac, I bought it used because it was a steal with FCP and Logic w/ install discs and everything. With the purchase of cameras and other gear I couldn't find enough money laying around to buy a serious editing computer so the MBP is my workhorse... so if this fixes the memory issue I swear I'll kiss you hahah.

 

[NonLinearEdits]

Alright omni disc sweep run and I have 61.1 GB in the library and 44.9 in the users folder which I suspect is whats jamming everything up but I don't even know where to begin... 24 something GB in the audio folder and stuff... application support obviously I can't dump.... this is a nightmare haha

 

[Young Spade]

Go into the folder and look around to see what you don't want/need. If you simply dragged applications into the trash to delete them, you're leaving all of the smaller files it creates behind and that might be the reason for a large chunk of used space.

 

[talmy]

Why not just get a larger hard drive? You are only using 115GB. You must have a very small drive.

 

[blastoboy1000]

Alright omni disc sweep run and I have 61.1 GB in the library and 44.9 in the users folder which I suspect is whats jamming everything up but I don't even know where to begin... 24 something GB in the audio folder and stuff... application support obviously I can't dump.... this is a nightmare haha

I would start by deleting everything within /Library/Caches. Beyond that, I'd go look through the folders within Library in OmniDiskSweeper and see what's taking up so much space, and see if you need/want those files. You should then do the same thing for the Users folder, ODS shows you the size for every file and folder on the drive.

 

[NonLinearEdits]

Ultimately I'd rather save the money for a hard drive toward a newer editing machine... preferably something in the desktop line... Constantly editing on the macbook pro is bothering me for lack of usb ports and everything. I also have some software I got from a school that's under an enterprise license that I can't get a hold of now so I don't want to risk losing it and having to buy it

I ended up solving the problem, the guy that sold me the mbp had about 65gb of loops for soundtrack pro... rather than deleting them I moved them off onto a spare external I had. Now I've got about 80gb free so it's not so bad.

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Thanks for everyone's help tho!!!

 

[Young Spade]

Ultimately I'd rather save the money for a hard drive toward a newer editing machine... preferably something in the desktop line... Constantly editing on the macbook pro is bothering me for lack of usb ports and everything. I also have some software I got from a school that's under an enterprise license that I can't get a hold of now so I don't want to risk losing it and having to buy it

I ended up solving the problem, the guy that sold me the mbp had about 65gb of loops for soundtrack pro... rather than deleting them I moved them off onto a spare external I had. Now I've got about 80gb free so it's not so bad.

----------

Thanks for everyone's help tho!!!

That's great. I would also advise to use Onyx and, with that program and a good guide to point you in the right direction, clean out some old files that are laying around the system.

That will clear up some space and, hopefully, make everything run a little faster as well.