What is "Other"?

[Gala]

I just got an External HDD and trying to manage my storage. Whats up with this "Other" and "Backup" usage and how to I get rid of it?

 

[GGJstudios]

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML storage tab is about, this may help explain:

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating my space​

 

[b0fh666]

I do have 313GB of 'other'

 

[GGJstudios]

I do have 313GB of 'other'

How much you have in the "Other" category will vary between users. It's perfectly normal.

 

[b0fh666]

yup! in my case it is vmware fusion virtual disks, mostly. those suckers tend to get huge.

 

[jjames1000000]

yup! in my case it is vmware fusion virtual disks, mostly. those suckers tend to get huge.

b0fh666:

I've been going through all of these forums trying to figure out my problem, I've got 185GB of 'Other', as shown in the attached photo. I filled up my harddrive to see if the space was being used by 'Local Snapshots' as mentioned in other posts, but as I couldn't copy anything more onto my drive, I guess that's not the problem.

I've also attached a screenshot from OmniDiskSweeper, showing that when 'full', my disk only contains 365GB of data, so there's ~140 'missing'

I've come to your response because it's the only mention I can find of Virtual Machines - I recently installed Parallels, then uninstalled it due to problems, reinstalled it, then uninstalled it again as the problems persisted. I'm wondering if they're what's still using all the space?

Can you let me know what I can do here? I've given up on Parallels, so I'm happy to not have VM's installed at all, I'm just not sure how to completely delete them... if that is the problem!

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[jjames1000000]

Here are the screenshots mentioned:

 

[b0fh666]

install 'Disk Inventory X', it makes it easy to find stuff that is wasting your disk.

not sure about where parallels installs the VMs, fusion creates them on ˜/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized

cheers

 

[jjames1000000]

I've tried using Disk Inventory X, it only shows 341.9 GB of data. I've also tried Daisy Disk, which shows 498.5 GB, but if you add up the totals on the right, they only add to 364.3.

I'm very confused by all of this... the space is obviously being taken up, but no program can show me where it is

 

[b0fh666]

what are those huge blue things on the top? listing says 'folder', that's odd... 91 gigs on those.

 

[jjames1000000]

They're two iPhoto Library files - I've got lots of photos!

 

[b0fh666]

ah, ok... I also do have tons of photos but they show up as lots of .cr2 and .jpg files.

 

[richnyc]

It could be many things... I know my 'other' is a virtual space reserved for Windows 7 in Parallels Desktop 8 (not all but the most of it), at least I think so