Question on SSD available Space MBP

[DSTOFEL]

I've got a Mid 2012 15 inch Retina MBP (2.6 Ghz I7, 500GB SSD) that I use for work. The SSD was filling up a bit and I'm trying to trim it down a bit by deleting/moving off files. I have a question I'm hoping someone can help me answer.

When I look at Disk Utility, it says that I have 235GB of available space (in the grid portion of the screen), but in the top portion of the screen where it breaks it out between apps, photo's, audio, etc..., it says I only have 160GB available. When I open up "DaisyDisk" (app) it says that I've got 339GB used (i.e. roughly 160GB available).

I'm just curious why the difference between what Disk Utility states as available space (i.e. in the grid section) versus what it states in the "upper section" and what DaisyDisk claims.

 

[Weaselboy]

I do see something that concerns me in that DaisyDisk screenshot. That lost+found 10.9GB can be an indication of a problem. It is created by the file system when files are sort of lost for a variety of reasons. This can be an unclean power down, or ejecting a drive in the middle of writes, or even a pending disk failure. Look in that folder and see if there is anything there you want to keep, and of not, delete it.

Now do a full backup if you don't already have one.

Then do a command-r boot to recovery and use Disk Utility to run First Aid on the disk. Does that show anything? Reboot after.

If that does not fix it, run the command below in Terminal to reindex Spotlight. It can take half an hour or so for the reindex to complete, so give it time. When the Spotlight index gets corrupted it will make those storage readies all wrong.

Let us know how that works out.