Space occupied by other files and folders

[Captain Tonga]

Hi there,

I recently ran Disk Inventory X and found that I have lost 50gig to 'Space occupied by other files and folders'.

I really don't know where to go from here. Any help would be great.

Thank you.

 

[GGJstudios]

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion storage tab is about, this may help explain:

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating my space​

For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:

• Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
• For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.
  OS X Lion: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs
• 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.
  
  
• Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk 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.
• Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
• Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:

• Encrypted drive
• Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
• App filling log file
• App or file was 89GB
• Drive needed to be re-indexed
• Time Machine backup file
• Large app cache file
• Garageband files and video podcasts
• Oversized email being duplicated
• Another email issue

 

[Captain Tonga]

That's awesome man, I'll try what you've said and see what results I get.

Cheers.

 

[Captain Tonga]

Ok, so upon repairing and re-indexing the disc it went down from 50 to 40, which is a plus. However I still can't find where this 40gig is. I used all of the apps you listed to try to identify where the space is going to no avail.

I am at a touch lost.

 

[GGJstudios]

Ok, so upon repairing and re-indexing the disc it went down from 50 to 40, which is a plus. However I still can't find where this 40gig is. I used all of the apps you listed to try to identify where the space is going to no avail.

I am at a touch lost.

Did you look at all of the listed threads where others found solutions? Also, did you do the Finder search, as recommended?

 

[Mal]

Ok, so upon repairing and re-indexing the disc it went down from 50 to 40, which is a plus. However I still can't find where this 40gig is. I used all of the apps you listed to try to identify where the space is going to no avail.

I am at a touch lost.

OmniDiskSweeper is probably the best I've found to find things like this. Did you check that it wasn't the MobileBackups volume, however? You didn't give much detail as to what you did from GGJstudios' post.

jW

 

[Captain Tonga]

I disabled mobile backups with 'sudo tmutil disablelocal'.

Did you look at all of the listed threads where others found solutions? Also, did you do the Finder search, as recommended?

The finder search came up with no massive files, the largest being a 3gig Starcraft file. I read through the other threads and ran through their solutions, without much success.

Disk Inventory X is now showing no space occupied by other files and folders however System Information shows 45gig devoted to Other. On investigation I can account for about 25gig (From Garage Band, Logic, Starcraft). But that still leaves 20gig a mystery.