Where has my free space gone?

[omtatsat]

Hello. I have an iMac with 38 GB Hard Disk.I have Mac Leopard 10.5.8 installed.

The available free space( when I click on Hard Disk symbol and then information) shows 11.5 GB and 26.5 GB used space.

When I manually add up what I have on all my files it comes to only 21.5 GB
Where is the other 5 GB?

Does the System use 5GB of Free place as reserve or memory?

Thanks for help.

 

[celticpride678]

The actual storage space and advertised storage space of a hard drive is always different.

 

[appleguy123]

It's gigabits vs gigabytes. I'm not smart enough to explain it, but that is the reason.

 

[DoFoT9]

It's gigabits vs gigabytes. I'm not smart enough to explain it, but that is the reason.

haha dont be silly.

but i dont think this is the case. the 38GB is GigaBytes.

OSX will allocate a significant amount of space for virtual memory, temp files and the like - this is the likely cause of the space. download "What Size", which will give a detailed insight into what is using the space

 

[omtatsat]

"What Size" program

Thanks for tip! I found a large file called Printers with 3 GB of files for different printers. I deleted all except my printer and saved about 3 GB space!

Are there any Language files that I can delete to save space?

 

[spinnerlys]

Use Monolingual to remove unwanted languages.

Hard Drive Size Discrepancy

There are also Disk Inventory X (PPC), OmniDiskSweeper (Universal) and GrandPersepctive (Universal) to scan your HDD for where the GBs are going to.

Btw, MRoogle is a good tool to search to MR Fora for most questions and answers.

 

[maflynn]

Did you include folders and such that are hidden. For instance /var/vm holds the swap files and they could potentially add up to a lot of space.

Check out OmniDiskSweeper it shows you where your space is being consumed and its free