unable to find 'hidden files'

[cavanholi]

Hello there

My macbook constantly runs out of space, when looking through the disk utility, it says it has 10GB of hidden files, totalling totalling 72 GB but when I type 'du -h' at my user folder it gives me only 65GB of files.

So where it is this almost 8GB missing? I've looked everywhere I could think of.

Thank you for your time.

P.S.: I did a rather quick research in google and here, but only found threads related to files/folder that are actually consuming space not about this difference between what disk utility and du -h.

 

[Weaselboy]

Do you have Time Machine turned on? It may be the hidden Time Machine local snapshots taking up some space. You can read about it here.

Run the command below in Terminal and it will show how much space is being used for these local snapshots.

sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

Just turn Time Machine off then back on and it will zero out this space.

 

[cavanholi]

No, my TimeMachine is off, never set it up.

But now I'm thinking, once I had to reinstall the system because it was always going to recovery mode, wonder if it anything from that time. :/

 

[davidlv]

Hello there
My macbook constantly runs out of space, when looking through the disk utility, it says it has 10GB of hidden files, totalling totalling 72 GB but when I type 'du -h' at my user folder it gives me only 65GB of files.
So where it is this almost 8GB missing? I've looked everywhere I could think of.
Thank you for your time.
P.S.: I did a rather quick research in google and here, but only found threads related to files/folder that are actually consuming space not about this difference between what disk utility and du -h.

Could it be the sleep image file? If you have 8GB of RAM, the sleepimage file can be about that exact size.
/private/var/vm/sleepimage
How are you searching for those hidden files? You could try using EasyFind (set the prefs to show hidden files), its free and much better than Spotlight for almost everything.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11076/easyfind

 

[cavanholi]

I've checked that also and that is some spacing being used there.But I'm referring to 8GB in my user's folder. Not in the system root folder.

 

[davidlv]

I've checked that also and that is some spacing being used there. But I'm referring to 8GB in my user's folder. Not in the system root folder.

You could download TinkerTool (from macupdate.com etc) and use that to show all hidden files, check your home folder and then reverse the show hidden files setting.
There are other tools available that may be better, like OmniDiskSweeper
http://en.softonic.com/s/omni-sweeper:mac