Start-up disk getting full - but what's filling it up?

[badlydrawnboy]

I have a 120 GB SSD that I use for my boot drive. I got a warning it's getting full which surprised me, because I store my data on an internal RAID 0.

I did a "Get Info" on my user folder and it says 93 GB. Whoa! But when I do "Get Info" on all of the folders in the user directory (i.e. Applications, Documents, etc.), they don't add up to 93 GB. I discovered that the main chunk of this 93 GB are the Parallels Virtual Machines, but that only accounts for 45 GB. There are a few other folders that are about 700 MB - 1 GB, but I can't figure out where the other 45 GB are.

Any idea how to find out?

And also, if there are any Parallels users out there, can I store the VMs in a different location other than the Documents folder?

 

[aristobrat]

I use the free OmniDiskSweeper app to show me how much space each folder is using.

And yes, you should be able to copy your VM to an external drive (as long as it's not open and running when you do it).

 

[celticpride678]

Grand Perspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/) is a good app to see what is taking up space on your hard drive.

 

[torbjoern]

I use DiskRing to see which folders take up the most space:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33170/diskring

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Thanks everyone. Found out I had duplicates of my virtual machines on the boot drive. I moved them to my data drive a while back, but forgot to delete the duplicates. I'm back to having 80% free space on the boot drive. Hooray!