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kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
Hi, I cant seem to find out where the 400 gb files are in this other section when I do a storage check? I use about 300gb that I can see but only have 300gb left? Any advice please?

Thanks!
 

Blowback

macrumors 65816
Jan 10, 2018
1,306
736
VA
Not sure what the problem may be or what the ‘last’ thing you may have done is but I would check to see if its indexing; shut-down and restart; take a good look at Activity Monitor etc. May be off topic a bit but I ran into a similar situation once and tracked it down to having subscribed to several podcasts.....that were video podcasts and downloading 30-60 min. videos. Also check your icloud storage situation. I’ve seen this before but can’t seem to remember the particulars.
 

kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
Hi, thanks for the suggestions.......Nothing i've tried so far has worked. I only have the free 5gb icloud & that's full. I don't susbscribe to podcasts on my macbook, only my ipad.......
 

kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
This is a picture of the drive in disk utility...

685 GB used even though every disk sweep software says only 233GB used??

received_2779425445647941.jpeg
 

HDFan

Contributor
Jun 30, 2007
7,290
3,337
1. Do a getinfo on the disk in the finder. Are you showing a lot of disk tied up in "purgeable"?

2. If so run a program such as DaisyDisk that shows you where most of your disk, including some of the caches, is being used. You can use it to reduce things in the "purgeable" category, as well as personal files.

Unfortunately the "purgeable" will likely return. It is used for things like caches, TM snapshots, etc. IOS device backups can also take a lot of space.

I had set warning messages for when my available disk space was <20%. I was getting them constantly, as my purgeable numer was almost a terabyte. So I had to turn them off. I just let the OS handle it, and as long as my free + puregable is >= 30% or so I don't worry about it.
 

kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
Hi, I dont get anything that's purgeable so its not that Im afraid.....

Thanks for the suggestion......
 

kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
1. Do a getinfo on the disk in the finder. Are you showing a lot of disk tied up in "purgeable"?

2. If so run a program such as DaisyDisk that shows you where most of your disk, including some of the caches, is being used. You can use it to reduce things in the "purgeable" category, as well as personal files.

Unfortunately the "purgeable" will likely return. It is used for things like caches, TM snapshots, etc. IOS device backups can also take a lot of space.

I had set warning messages for when my available disk space was <20%. I was getting them constantly, as my purgeable numer was almost a terabyte. So I had to turn them off. I just let the OS handle it, and as long as my free + puregable is >= 30% or so I don't worry about it.


I did run the daisy disk app & it says I have 390gb of hiiden files! No idea what they could be. I cant find them in finder even with hidden files turned on??
[automerge]1603279968[/automerge]
Screenshot 2020-10-21 at 12.31.05.png
 

kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
That's not the other Im talking about....

Here it is.....

The grey bar is "other"

400 gb of nothing I can see.....

Screenshot 2020-10-21 at 15.47.39.png
 

Blowback

macrumors 65816
Jan 10, 2018
1,306
736
VA
Just checked mine in every way posssible....~13GB 'other'....Have you looked on the Apple Forums? They are a very good source (also) for solving problems such as this....a lot of expert advice. The odds of you being the only one to see or have this issue are slim.
 

Blowback

macrumors 65816
Jan 10, 2018
1,306
736
VA
Quick search of AF gave this :
[IMG alt="Kappy"]https://discussions.apple.com/assets/avatar/5622b257a40d781f/848f5d260fe1fb746a69fb4ae000cecf4cd80f862181dbc545d5c1adf4077a55[/IMG]
Kappy

User level:Level 10
(358,653 points)

DesktopsSpeciality level out of ten: 1
Answer:A:
What is This Other Category in Storage Display

What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?

"Other" contains any of the following types of files. They cannot necessarily be deleted wholesale. Furthermore, “Other” is not an actual, physical file. Rather it’s an arbitrary category to which the files are assigned for display convenience.

  • System temporary files
  • macOS system folders
  • Archives and disk images (.zip, .iso, etc.)
  • Personal user data
  • Files from the user’s library (Application Support, iCloud files, screensavers, etc.)
  • Cache files
  • Fonts, plugins, extensions
  • Hidden files
  • Other files that are not recognized by a Spotlight search

Get Correct Storage Information

Do not use the information from the Storage section of the About This Mac dialog. Ignore the Storage information as it is typically wrong. To find out the correct information for any disk: Select a Desktop disk icon. Press Command-I to open the Get Info window and look at the topmost panel displayed. You will find the disk information displayed for Capacity, Available, and Used. If you have more than one disk/partition then repeat for each one on your Desktop.

The categories found in the Storage section of About This Mac is simply an arbitrary way of displaying files on your drive. There are no such categories actually on the drive.

FYI: it was dated 09/07/2020....maybe gives some explanation of what you're looking at?
 

brianmowrey

macrumors 6502
Oct 5, 2020
419
133
I did run the daisy disk app & it says I have 390gb of hiiden files! No idea what they could be. I cant find them in finder even with hidden files turned on??
It’s right there in the daisy disk report: Time Machine snapshots.

Catalina will allocate up to the last 20% of your boot drive’s space for these, before it begins deleting old ones. So everything is normal. It’s just poor UI on Apple’s part.
 

Blowback

macrumors 65816
Jan 10, 2018
1,306
736
VA
It’s right there in the daisy disk report: Time Machine snapshots.

Catalina will allocate up to the last 20% of your boot drive’s space for these, before it begins deleting old ones. So everything is normal. It’s just poor UI on Apple’s part.
I think 'Kappy' as I posted above (note his user level!) is saying the same thing in so many words.....
Glad you figured it out!
 

kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
It’s right there in the daisy disk report: Time Machine snapshots.

Catalina will allocate up to the last 20% of your boot drive’s space for these, before it begins deleting old ones. So everything is normal. It’s just poor UI on Apple’s part.

I saw that but when I deleted the snapshot files, it didnt reduce so thought it wasnt that.....

So there's nothing I can do about this 20% even if I decide not to use time machine?
 

brianmowrey

macrumors 6502
Oct 5, 2020
419
133
I saw that but when I deleted the snapshot files, it didnt reduce so thought it wasnt that.....

So there's nothing I can do about this 20% even if I decide not to use time machine?
I can’t say, without knowing what steps you used to delete snapshots. If you can roll backward in TM even with the TM drive disconnected, the snapshots are still there.

I don’t use TM, but if I did, I would probably partition my boot drive to keep the snapshots in check. It’s not elegant, and would require you to resize things later if your core storage increased, but I already do a similar system with my two internal drives anway
 

kevthecab

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2020
10
0
Thanks for all the help everyone. Will look into binning TM & seeing if I can get my 440gb back!
 

HDFan

Contributor
Jun 30, 2007
7,290
3,337
If you have disabled Time Machine, in terminal you can enter:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-10-23-011519

You can then delete them individually by:

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2020-10-23-011519

However as stated

"Other" contains any of the following types of files.

there are a lot of files that you can't control.
 
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