Space usage

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating up my space? by theSeb

To find out, where you storage capacity is being used, you can use the following free applications:

• DiskInventory X
• OmniDiskSweeper
• JDisk Report
• GrandPerspective

Maybe try a combination of several, if you still can't find the "missing" capacity.

 

If any/all of those tools show you have more free than the OSX Disk usage meter, try repairing the disk and its permissions, as I find this to sometimes mark space as used as it isn't freed up due to permissions.

 

If you normally use Time Machine to backup to an external drive or NAS, and you leave TM on while you are mobile and not connected to your backup drive, you may have some local TM backups taking up disk space. There is another thread on this forum discussing this issue.

The recommended procedure on that thread was:

You are not freeing up disk space when deleting files because of local (as in "on your hard drive", so not on the Time Machine drive!) Time Machine backups, a new feature introduced in Lion. This feature is per default activated and can, unfortunately, not be disabled in the Time Machine menu. But: you can safely disable the local backups using the following terminal command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal


This may be the problem with your disk space usage.

 

If you'd like to cut down on the used space on your Air, you can take a look at the "Removing Files to Save Space" section of the guide to increase storage space on the Macbook Air.

It includes information on disabling local Time Machine backups as well as removing unnecessary system language files, etc.