Why is my hard drive so full?

[Ramius]

I just deleted tons of stuff to try to free up hard drive space.
I removed huge galleries in iPhoto, all my movie projects in iMovie, half of my torrents and cleaned out my download folder.

I deleted enough to assume my content would only require half my hard drive space. And it turns out, I was right.

So why do I only have 15 gigabyte of free space left? And what is the 70+ "Other" data occupying my hard drive?

I have looked through my folders and I just dont understand what it is.

 

[jamesjingyi]

I just deleted tons of stuff to try to free up hard drive space.
I removed huge galleries in iPhoto, all my movie projects in iMovie, half of my torrents and cleaned out my download folder.

I deleted enough to assume my content would only require half my hard drive space. And it turns out, I was right.

So why do I only have 15 gigabyte of free space left? And what is the 70+ "Other" data occupying my hard drive?

I have looked through my folders and I just dont understand what it is.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1342230/

 

[Ramius]

Just downloaded Grand Central.
Found out that OSX has kept lots of old files that I thought I had deleted.
Like the old version of iMovie = 2gbs.
Why did it keep that hidden when it installed a brand new one?

But the one thing I cant get my mind around. My iMovie gallery is now 25gb big. Despite being completely empty. Why is this?

And my iPhoto gallery is also 18gb big. Despite having only 10gb of content.

 

[ufkdo]

Just downloaded Grand Central.
Found out that OSX has kept lots of old files that I thought I had deleted.
Like the old version of iMovie = 2gbs.
Why did it keep that hidden when it installed a brand new one?

But the one thing I cant get my mind around. My iMovie gallery is now 25gb big. Despite being completely empty. Why is this?

And my iPhoto gallery is also 18gb big. Despite having only 10gb of content.

Could you please verify the disk using Disk Utility? At some point, OS may have lost track of files and that may be filling up your hard drive.

 

[Ramius]

Could you please verify the disk using Disk Utility? At some point, OS may have lost track of files and that may be filling up your hard drive.

Disk rights or disk? Because I did a repair of rights.

What can have caused OS to lose track of its own files then?

I was wondering though, can this be a result of upgrading OS several times. I´ve gone from Leopard, to Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Ideally this should be hasslefree. But my logical sense tell me this is asking for trouble at some point.

 

[ufkdo]

Disk rights or disk? Because I did a repair of rights.

What can have caused OS to lose track of its own files then?

I was wondering though, can this be a result of upgrading OS several times. I´ve gone from Leopard, to Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Ideally this should be hasslefree. But my logical sense tell me this is asking for trouble at some point.

Not the permissions but I am talking about repairing the disk. Once you go to disk utility, you will realize that repair disk is greyed out. In order to repair disk, you should boot into recovery partition but let's first verify disk.

Here is an image I have found on the internet which shows the result if the disk needs repair:

Frankly speaking, I am not too knowledgeable why OS X might lose track of files. The most common reasons are not ejecting disks properly (in case of internal disk, force shut down of computer) and bad updates. For example, while I was upgrading to the Mavericks, my computer lost track of installation file of Mavericks which was around 5 GB. After repairing the disk, it has found it.

 

[Ramius]

But I dont have a bootup disk of Mavericks. Can you repair disk without any disk?

I ran Verify disk, and it told me I needed to repair it, but i forgot what it said. It told me to hold down some keys while booting up

 

[Bruno09]

To repair your Macintosh HD drive, you need to boot up from the Recovery partition.

That is what Disk Utility told you : "restart your computer, press and hold down Cmd + r while booting up".

In the "Mac OS X Utilities" window that shows up, select Disk Utility, then select "Macintosh HD", and click on "Repair Disk".

When the job is completed, quit Disk Utility, and restart the Mac.

 

[sjinsjca]

Orphaned blocks, eh.

You will need to boot into the Recovery Partition, run Disk Utility, and have it "repair" the disk. (You can't do this when booted off the disk.)

Some questions:

o What backup strategy do you use? Time Machine or a third-party utility or service?

o Do you have FileVault enabled?

Please let me know, as I'm trying to stitch together a cause for this occasional happenstance. The good news is, it likely does not mean a physical failure of your machine, just something misbehaving. The cure, for now, is to do the steps I outlined above every now and then.

 

[Ramius]

Orphaned blocks, eh.

You will need to boot into the Recovery Partition, run Disk Utility, and have it "repair" the disk. (You can't do this when booted off the disk.)

Some questions:

o What backup strategy do you use? Time Machine or a third-party utility or service?

o Do you have FileVault enabled?

Please let me know, as I'm trying to stitch together a cause for this occasional happenstance. The good news is, it likely does not mean a physical failure of your machine, just something misbehaving. The cure, for now, is to do the steps I outlined above every now and then.

Will I have to create my own recovery partition before rebooting into recovery mode? Or will it do this automatically for me?

 

[Weaselboy]

Will I have to create my own recovery partition before rebooting into recovery mode? Or will it do this automatically for me?

You already have a 650MB recovery partition there and it is just hidden so you never noticed.

 

[Ramius]

I just repaired my disk. But I still dont have any more available space than before.

70 gigabyte are still marked as "other".

Looks like Im gonna have to do alot of manual work i Grand perspective to delete stuff that OSX is not showing me.

 

[sjinsjca]

I just repaired my disk. But I still dont have any more available space than before.

70 gigabyte are still marked as "other".

Looks like Im gonna have to do alot of manual work i Grand perspective to delete stuff that OSX is not showing me.

Did the orphaned clusters go away with the repair?

 

[ufkdo]

I just repaired my disk. But I still dont have any more available space than before.

70 gigabyte are still marked as "other".

Looks like Im gonna have to do alot of manual work i Grand perspective to delete stuff that OSX is not showing me.

If you successfully repaired the disk, you should now check your directory for lost+found folder. It should be under Macintosh HD. If the Disk Utility found the files, it would put it in this folder.

 

[Weaselboy]

I just repaired my disk. But I still dont have any more available space than before.

70 gigabyte are still marked as "other".

Looks like Im gonna have to do alot of manual work i Grand perspective to delete stuff that OSX is not showing me.

That readout is based on the Spotlight index and sometimes that index gets corrupted.

Enter this command in Terminal and wait for Spotlight to reindex and then check again to see what it shows.

sudo mdutil -E /

 

[Ramius]

If you successfully repaired the disk, you should now check your directory for lost+found folder. It should be under Macintosh HD. If the Disk Utility found the files, it would put it in this folder.

The hell. Smart thing.
But slightly underwhelming. There is a file called "iNode" thats 5gbs big. Deleting it now.
-
Managed to free up 15+ gb now, by using Grand perspective and disk repair.

Still there is ALOT of gigabytes marked as "other" I simply do not know what is.