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[Partially Resolved] ~100 GB of "Others" that can't be found!

R

ryan.1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 18, 2012
19
0
China
Hi,

Now before you decide to quick reply and say either use the custom google on the forums or go search it out, I want to say that I've already been doing that for the past month.

The issue is simple, after I installed lion on a mid 2009 MacBook Pro, like everyone else I tried the new features in the "About This Mac" menu. As the attached picture shows, I have around 99.55 GB of "others". This was 120GB after I basically removed everything that I thought would be "others" (so none of the things in the other categories, but I still moved most of my movies and ebooks and saved files of other programs since I do 3D work and files can go up to several GBs).

5od0sk.png


I am aware of the whole "local backup/ snapshot" issue and yes I have used the console command to turn them off, hence the zero KB in the back up category. After some more research I went ahead and tried omni disk sweeper to get a detailed view on my hard disk, and again as you can see in the second attached picture there is no 100 GB of files that aren't music, apps or video. I even went ahead and added all the things that might be "others" and the sum doesn't exceed 50GB. You can clearly see in the third column (most right) of omnidisksweeper that in comparison to the storage tab of about this mac, the data matches (slightly since I've moved movies and added around 10GB of music very recently) so its not made up or unreasonable.

33z49ac.png


Now some of you may say: "You only noticed this ~100GB because the OS is showing it to you for the first time! you always had that before!".

Well, no thats not the case. Before Lion i had a bootcamp partition of roughly 70GB and I still had 60GB free on my MAC HD. So I'm assuming that this 100GB might be a left over of the bootcamp partition thats not properly removed, or something thats beyond my limited IT knowledge.

Any ideas or link to any sort of help would be very helpful, I'd like to get back my bootcamp partition to have a LAN party with the lads. Also getting tired of having to remove everything every time from my HD to external drives and what not.

Regards,
Ryan
 
Last edited:
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion storage tab is about, this may help explain:
For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
 
GGJstudios said:
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion storage tab is about, this may help explain:
For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I think you copy/pasted that form another thread that you answered because I have followed all of your advices (I used omni disk sweeper as per your recommendation) including the large file thing and it yielded no results.

Any other suggestions would be very helpful.

Regards
 
ryan.1 said:
Thanks for the reply. I think you copy/pasted that form another thread that you answered because I have followed all of your advices (I used omni disk sweeper as per your recommendation) including the large file thing and it yielded no results.
Click to expand...
I post that in many threads, because the same question gets asked repeatedly. You said you used OmniDiskSweeper, but what about the others, per my recommendation? As I said, you should try several of those apps, not just one. They don't all show the same level of detail.
 
GGJstudios said:
I post that in many threads, because the same question gets asked repeatedly. You said you used OmniDiskSweeper, but what about the others, per my recommendation? As I said, you should try several of those apps, not just one. They don't all show the same level of detail.
Click to expand...

I'll try to get more of those apps and see how different they are. The mystery here is that before lion i had 70GB (partitioned) bootcamp and i have a feeling that this ~100Gb is somehow related to that. Since I simply don't have 100GB or "others" on my mac, Im pretty sure it includes all those system files as well.
 
ryan.1 said:
I'll try to get more of those apps and see how different they are. The mystery here is that before lion i had 70GB (partitioned) bootcamp and i have a feeling that this ~100Gb is somehow related to that. Since I simply don't have 100GB or "others" on my mac, Im pretty sure it includes all those system files as well.
Click to expand...
Let me know if you don't find it.
 
GGJstudios said:
Let me know if you don't find it.
Click to expand...

I used the other apps but they gave similar results. My friend's bought less than one month ago mac book air has the same problem, her laptop is 68GB in total but more than 50% of that is "others". Her laptop is very new and she has basically no apps or anything thats not movie or music.

Her laptop is now shutting off randomly saying there isn't enough space one it (don't know the exact error, I can find out thou).

Help would be very appreciated, its getting critical here.
 
ryan.1 said:
Help would be very appreciated, its getting critical here.
Click to expand...
You might try searching the forum for other threads on this topic, as there have been dozens. Look to see what others discovered, as it's not the same in all cases. That should give you some more ideas of where to look. Here are a few resolutions found by others with this question:
 
Last edited:
GGJstudios said:
You might try searching the forum for other threads on this topic, as there have been dozens. Look to see what others discovered, as it's not the same in all cases. That should give you some more ideas of where to look. Here are a few resolutions found by others with this question:
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out now. However I've already read more than a couple of dozen websites/threads, they all revolved around time machine backups. Regardless, Im going to check the links as soon as I hit the "submit reply" button.

I'll reply the results.
 
GGJstudios said:
You might try searching the forum for other threads on this topic, as there have been dozens. Look to see what others discovered, as it's not the same in all cases. That should give you some more ideas of where to look. Here are a few resolutions found by others with this question:
Click to expand...

Alright I tried all but reindexing. I had none of the mail app or garageband/iMovie issues. Encryption wasn't a problem since mine isn't encrypted at all. Time machine and disk repair, I did the methods ,none helped. no app, log or file was even more than 10GB or collectively 100GB for me to get rid off. Double checked the cache files, all gone still not much of a change.

So im not sure what to do here? You see as I said i have the same issue on a less than a month old MacBook air with virtually nothing in it except office 2011 and some App Store stuff (other than music). The Macbook Air has done almost nothing other than watch movies, surf the web and open some office files (light excel or word, nothing else). However now the Mac just shuts down saying that it has not enough memory to run itself.....

Any ideas?

*on a side note, can i receive email when i get a notification from the forums? checking every hours is tedious (and I'm lazy of course).
 
ryan.1 said:
Since I simply don't have 100GB or "others" on my mac, Im pretty sure it includes all those system files as well.
Click to expand...

You do have 100GB of "others" on your mac. 39GB of it is the documents, Uni, Library and other stuff in your home directory. 51GB of it are system files: 29.7GB apps, the /Library, /System, etc. That's all "others".

Adding the stuff you showed in OmniDiskSweeper left 9GB as unfound, but it's so close that the rest is probably small directories adding up.
 
AlanShutko said:
You do have 100GB of "others" on your mac. 39GB of it is the documents, Uni, Library and other stuff in your home directory. 51GB of it are system files: 29.7GB apps, the /Library, /System, etc. That's all "others".

Adding the stuff you showed in OmniDiskSweeper left 9GB as unfound, but it's so close that the rest is probably small directories adding up.
Click to expand...

And i thought I was good in maths. Then I assume I will have to focus on the dying one month old MacBook Air I have, I'll get omni disk sweeper on it and do the math and see whats the problem and post again.
 
Alright on the Mac book Air I have found out that there are 15GB of files in the mail app folder. Going to look at the links above again and see what i can do, will keep in touch.

Alright its fixed on the Mac book air, ~20 GB of "deleted messages" and "Deleted Messages".

For the Mac book Pro, I'll have to calculate the sum of the GBs from DiskSweeper again (thnx to the above reply for doing it, i'll do it with yours as well so see for the rest).

Its still confusing how I managed to keep a ~70GB boot camp partition while having around 15GB free on my MacBook pro before lion update. I'll have to do some proper research once my studies are a bit less than now.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
GGJstudios said:
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion storage tab is about, this may help explain:
For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
Click to expand...

Disk Inventory X has really made an impact.. Am cleaning up a 'consumer' MacBook Air, beware also that the 'Mail' application will download ALL emails and attachments to the physical HDD or SSD. Does this show on your ordinary file search? of course not..
 
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