Strange storage saga

[photoj2754]

So I just migrated all my info from my 2007 iMac to my new 27" retina iMac. I have the 500GB flash drive and when I checked About This Mac this is what it shows:

The "other" category is obviously the largest but on the old iMac other was 0. Just wondering why this is and if there is a way to cut that down or does it not matter at all. Thanks.

 

[hifimacianer]

"Other" can't be Zero, because OSX should be listed as "other", including all the Garageband Samples etc. I think your old iMac just had a bug, wich caused that there was a "0" there.

 

[maflynn]

Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space.

If you run it with sudo (As shown below), it will include some system files that it woud not normally have access to scan. That is a more accurate representation of what's consuming your drive.

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

Another option is to use this terminal command
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I prefer to redirect it to a text file (this puts it in your Documents folder
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g / > ~/Documents/du.txt

Like the sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper command, it will scan all directories, but produce a text file as opposed to showing the results in a window

I hate how OSX reports space usage, the granularity is not set sufficiently to really report how your consuming the space.