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Please help!?! Finder is wrong...

s0nicpr0s

s0nicpr0s

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 1, 2010
230
47
Illinois
Finder reports that I only have 24 GB of free space on a 1 Terabyte hard drive. There is no way I have less than 200 GB free though. And just to try to alleviate some of this seeming congestion, I've deleted probably roughly 80 GB of stuff that was just sitting around as well. And if anything, my hard drive is being reported as more full upon doing so.

This has been troubling me for the past week or two and I can't seem to find any possible solutions to it, other than those that only help the MacBooks. Even though it shouldn't be running on an iMac anyway, I tried the "sudo tmutil disablelocal" that turns off local backups on the portable computers.

I'm not sure what to do, or what could possibly be going on, but any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
 
For space issues, there are a few things you can try:
  • Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
  • Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
    attachment.php
  • For Time Machine users on Lion, Time Machine local snapshots may be consuming space.
  • Use DiskInventory X (pre-Lion), OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
 
Thanks everyone. Didn't realize there was such a recent thread about it… So didn't have to create a new one, but I'll keep this updated if anything else comes up. I'm running GrandPerspective now.

*** Update ***

GrandPerspective finished looking at everything, and has only found 831 GB of stuff. So thats a little under 150 GB of space I seem to be missing. Will be running OmniDiskSweeper in just a second here.

*** Update 2 ***
The program is currently running. But it is suggesting that my drive is 930 GB, not 1000
 
Last edited:
Ok, OmniDiskSweeper found that mail decided to archive almost 160 GB worth of 'Recovered' emails. So thank you very much for the suggestions and all the help :D
 
s0nicpr0s said:
*** Update 2 ***
The program is currently running. But it is suggesting that my drive is 930 GB, not 1000
Click to expand...

That is bit vs. byte.
1TB = 1,000,000,000,000 B
1KiB = 1024 B, 1 MiB = 1024KiB
1,000,000,000,000/1024^3 = 931.323 GiB

After formatting 1TB drives have 931GB of available space.
Company's have been sued over this. Well, the way they market HDD's anyway.
 
Ahh, ok. Thanks. Different parts of the computer say differently too. Finder says it's 999.35 GB, but it doesn't seem to be the most accurate thing right now.
 
s0nicpr0s said:
Ahh, ok. Thanks. Different parts of the computer say differently too. Finder says it's 999.35 GB, but it doesn't seem to be the most accurate thing right now.
Click to expand...

Apple does things differently. Changed I think in OS 10.6. Space saving! I am kidding. Same space. It just depends how the developers want it listed in their products. Probably just got tired of explaining the 1024 difference to customers. They are in retail now, y'know.
 
derbothaus said:
Apple does things differently. Changed I think in OS 10.6. Space saving! I am kidding. Same space. It just depends how the developers want it listed in their products. Probably just got tired of explaining the 1024 difference to customers. They are in retail now, y'know.
Click to expand...

Is this why my 175MB files are displaying at 183MB, etc.? Is there some way to disable this "feature"?
 
warvanov said:
Is this why my 175MB files are displaying at 183MB, etc.? Is there some way to disable this "feature"?
Click to expand...

It depends on what is saying what. Your 175MB files may not be 175MB or they may not be 183MB. What is saying what? It doesn't matter as they take up the same bits whether you want to call it 175 or 183. It is the OS relaying how it counts those bits between different OS versions.
There is no way that I know of to disable the feature as it was written into diskutil.
Just need to get used to what Win say's and what OS X says. Then what 10.3 says vs. what 10.6 says. Your HD is probably large so you should not really be worrying about this too much.
 
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