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travod

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 10, 2013
172
68
When I say little I mean 160/250 available, but I have not put that much stuff on my laptop. I've only put some word documents, movies, and videos that should total up to AT MOST 50 GB. What's taking up so much space?
 
Last edited:

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,206
15,763
California
Do you have Time Machine turned on? If you do, some space will be used by Time Machine's local backups. You can just ignore it, as OS X will reduce this space if the user needs it for storage.
 

DisplacedMic

macrumors 65816
May 1, 2009
1,411
1
When I say little I mean 160/250 available, but I have not put that much stuff on my laptop. I've only put some word documents, movies, and videos that should total up to AT MOST 50 GB. What's taking up so much space?


lots of stuff in your mailbox?
dropbox?

there are lots of programs, some free some paid, that can help you with this like Disk Inventory X or daisy disk with the latter being my personal favourite.

you can also do this the old-fashioned way and just go through your finder and look.

probably something in your libraries somewhere - just google how to clear up space on your mac and you should be able to fix the problem... but like I said, i really like daisy disk.

also - time machine makes local backups and the hibernate feature eats up some space too.
 

cxc273

macrumors regular
Dec 12, 2012
112
5
So 90 GB is being used, but you're not sure where.

50 GB is being used for videos, music, etc., leaving 40 GB unaccounted for.

Mountain Lion requires 8 GB, leaving 32 GB.

Is it possible the remaining unaccounted for 32 GB is for applications you may have installed?
 

astoxos

macrumors regular
Jul 18, 2012
183
40
You can run a relevant program to find out what is happening inside your HD
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
When I say little I mean 160/250 available, but I have not put that much stuff on my laptop. I've only put some word documents, movies, and videos that should total up to AT MOST 50 GB. What's taking up so much space?

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the storage tab is about, this may help explain: 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.
  • 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.
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  • 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: Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
8,975
7,146
Perth, Western Australia
Do you have Time Machine turned on? If you do, some space will be used by Time Machine's local backups. You can just ignore it, as OS X will reduce this space if the user needs it for storage.

That.

The only place you should be checking for available space in Lion onwards is via get info on a disk.

If you're using "about this mac" the space reported there includes local TM backups which are removed as required, if needed.
 
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