What is taking up space on my MacBook Pro ?

[DomButcher]

Hi all,

my MacBook Pro says I have about 175 GB of space (125 GB is taken by ''Other'') used but OmniDisk Sweeper and Disk Inventory X say I have only 90 GB of space used on Macintosh HD.

I don't know what could take up so much space as I don't have a lot of stuff on my Mac and I checked iTunes Backups and they only take about 20 GB.

Thanks a lot,

DomButcher

 

[GGJstudios]

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

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

For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:

• Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
• For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion or later, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled by entering the following command in Terminal: sudo tmutil disablelocal.
  About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs​
• Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
• Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
  
• Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
• Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
• Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:

• Encrypted drive
• Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
• App filling log file
• App or file was 89GB
• Drive needed to be re-indexed
• Time Machine backup file
• Large app cache file
• Garageband files and video podcasts
• Oversized email being duplicated
• Another email issue
• 18.45EB of movies shown

Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi all,

my MacBook Pro says I have about 175 GB of space (125 GB is taken by ''Other'') used but OmniDisk Sweeper and Disk Inventory X say I have only 90 GB of space used on Macintosh HD.

I don't know what could take up so much space as I don't have a lot of stuff on my Mac and I checked iTunes Backups and they only take about 20 GB.

Thanks a lot,

DomButcher

Open Terminal app from /Applications/Utilities then copy paste in the line below and hit return. You will be asked for your password then it will list all your root folders along with space used in each in GB. Paste up that output here and we can help you out.

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