Storage Question

[sealbhaigh]

I recently purchased a new macbook pro 13 retina 128GB SSD. It's my first mac and when I check how much storage is taken up in my personal folder (music/movies/doc/etc.) it's telling me that 25GB is in the folder. However, when I check each folder inside, they all say at most 2GB. Which makes the total WAY less than 25. Is there a hidden folder system that I'm missing?

 

[CoastalOR]

In each User account there are some invisible folders. The folder that take the most space is the invisible Library folder. On my MBP with El Capitain it is almost 5 Gb.

 

[sealbhaigh]

Is there an easy way to view the hidden folders?

Basically the space was free until I tried to add my iTunes library and forgot to make it not copy onto the HD from the external. I deleted all the files in the music folder, but the 25GB stuck around in what I'm guessing now is a hidden folder.

 

[snaky69]

Is there an easy way to view the hidden folders?

Basically the space was free until I tried to add my iTunes library and forgot to make it not copy onto the HD from the external. I deleted all the files in the music folder, but the 25GB stuck around in what I'm guessing now is a hidden folder.

It's just that spotlight has not reindexed those folders yet.

It's a known bug since Mavericks, and it hasn't been fixed yet. If you truly want to know how much space you have left check disk utility or right click on your hard drive and get info.

 

[Weaselboy]

I recently purchased a new macbook pro 13 retina 128GB SSD. It's my first mac and when I check how much storage is taken up in my personal folder (music/movies/doc/etc.) it's telling me that 25GB is in the folder. However, when I check each folder inside, they all say at most 2GB. Which makes the total WAY less than 25. Is there a hidden folder system that I'm missing?

You are not looking at that Storage graphic in About this Mac are you? Like snaky69 said, that thing is all jacked up.

If you are just looking in Finder, there is a hidden user Library like CoastalOR mentioned, but that would usually only be 5-7GB or so.

Run the command below in Terminal and it will show the size of all your user folders GB, hidden or not. It takes a minute for the command to complete.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/

 

[sealbhaigh]

You are not looking at that Storage graphic in About this Mac are you? Like snaky69 said, that thing is all jacked up.

If you are just looking in Finder, there is a hidden user Library like CoastalOR mentioned, but that would usually only be 5-7GB or so.

Run the command below in Terminal and it will show the size of all your user folders GB, hidden or not. It takes a minute for the command to complete.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/

I was getting the number by right clicking on the folder and choosing and selecting Get Info. I ran the command in terminal which gave me roughly the same number. I'm just at a loss of where these GB are and how to get rid of them.

 

[Weaselboy]

I was getting the number by right clicking on the folder and choosing and selecting Get Info. I ran the command in terminal which gave me roughly the same number. I'm just at a loss of where these GB are and how to get rid of them.

Tell me exactly where you are getting this total from that does not match up? Because that Terminal command should match up with the total for your personal users folder.

 

[sealbhaigh]

Tell me exactly where you are getting this total from that does not match up? Because that Terminal command should match up with the total for your personal users folder.

Macintosh HD > USERS > Right Click on my User Folder > Get Info: "User" 29.62 GB
Open User Folder > Right Click on individual folders > Get Info:
Applications: 902KB
Desktop: Zero KB
Documents: 990KB
Downloads: 8.2MB
Movies: 7.01GB
Music: 532.7MB
Pictures: 9.66GB
Public: 6KB

Total of User Folder: 29.62GB
Total of all folders inside user folder: 18GB Give or take a MB or two.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

Is there an easy way to view the hidden folders?

Basically the space was free until I tried to add my iTunes library and forgot to make it not copy onto the HD from the external. I deleted all the files in the music folder, but the 25GB stuck around in what I'm guessing now is a hidden folder.

To see library while you have the finder go menu open press alt key and you will see library show up. Open it and there you go.

Library is where your apps will stores its data. If playing with plists and such...here is where its done as well. Example: I stopped playing a game. Uninstalled the app from applications. Few GB there, knew it had a lot more on the system. Bulk of its data was in library though. Waxed that folder since not need anymore and got the space back I expected.

Note: Be careful in library. Can do some great things here. Or some bad things.


Dig up CLI tools use for files. The gui based ones may not always be correct for reasons. CLI can be more correct than GUI at times.. basic command like df-h is th start of fun cli disk use tools.


Also in the case of file use after you deleted....turn off time machine for a little while. What can happen is it will remember those files and have the system think they are still there. Turn off time machine for a bit, you should see the system forget about those files and then are truly out of system and you get your drive space back. Not sure exactly of the technical reasons for the remembering, time machine off works like a champ so far though to resolve.

 

[Weaselboy]

Macintosh HD > USERS > Right Click on my User Folder > Get Info: "User" 29.62 GB
Open User Folder > Right Click on individual folders > Get Info:
Applications: 902KB
Desktop: Zero KB
Documents: 990KB
Downloads: 8.2MB
Movies: 7.01GB
Music: 532.7MB
Pictures: 9.66GB
Public: 6KB

Total of User Folder: 29.62GB
Total of all folders inside user folder: 18GB Give or take a MB or two.

You are not seeing the user library folder there and that should account for the difference. That command I gave you to run would have included the library folder though.

Run this command and it will show the user library size of around 11GB to explain the difference.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/Library

If you are still confused, run the below command again and post the output for us to take a look.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/

 

[Weaselboy]

Also in the case of file use after you deleted....turn off time machine for a little while. What can happen is it will remember those files and have the system think they are still there. Turn off time machine for a bit, you should see the system forget about those files and then are truly out of system and you get your drive space back. Not sure exactly of the technical reasons for the remembering, time machine off works like a champ so far though to resolve.

That would be Time Machine's local snapshots, but they are not stored in the users folder so would not explain OP's issue. The local snapshots are stored in a hidden /.Mobilebackups folder.

 

[sealbhaigh]

You are not seeing the user library folder there and that should account for the difference. That command I gave you to run would have included the library folder though.

Run this command and it will show the user library size of around 11GB to explain the difference.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/Library

If you are still confused, run the below command again and post the output for us to take a look.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g ~/

When I run the first code it gives me a total of 8

When I run the second code ~/ it gives me this:

28/Users/sealbhaigh/

28total

My concern is the number I posted above did not exist until after I accidentally copied my entire music library from the External HD.

 

[Weaselboy]

When I run the first code it gives me a total of 8

When I run the second code ~/ it gives me this:

28/Users/sealbhaigh/

28total

My concern is the number I posted above did not exist until after I accidentally copied my entire music library from the External HD.

That command rounds down to the nearest GB, so I'm not seeing an issue here. Looks like the user library space makes it add up correctly and everything is fine.

 

[sealbhaigh]

That command rounds down to the nearest GB, so I'm not seeing an issue here. Looks like the user library space makes it add up correctly and everything is fine.

So those are essential files or are they temp files that came over when I made the accidental copies? Is there a Mac version of CCleaner that would clean them up?

 

[Weaselboy]

So those are essential files or are they temp files that came over when I made the accidental copies? Is there a Mac version of CCleaner that would clean them up?

A little of both. There are a bunch of settings files in there and also a bunch of cache (temp) files in there. Do not mess with any of those cleaner apps as many of them delete things that need to be there and cause problems. Yours at 8GB is about average and I would not mess with it.

If you want you can look in this folder and see if there is a cache for any apps you know you no longer own and you can delete that cache folder to save a bit of space, but I don't think you will find much with only 8GB total there.

Just triple click the line below to select then right click and in the services menu select reveal in Finder and you will be in the correct folder.

~/Library/Caches

 

[glenthompson]

I use the app DaisyDisk for finding where I'm using disk space. Makes it easy to find large files that I might want to archive.

 

[Evren Carven]

Is there an easy way to view the hidden folders?

Basically the space was free until I tried to add my iTunes library and forgot to make it not copy onto the HD from the external. I deleted all the files in the music folder, but the 25GB stuck around in what I'm guessing now is a hidden folder.

I'm using an app named Funter to switch hidden files visibility.