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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > YIKES where'd my disk space go?

YIKES where'd my disk space go?
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justinkaisse
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Oct 9, 2013, 07:30 PM
 
Or...
"Where, oh where
Had my disk space gone
Oh where, oh where
Can it be?"

My ML startup disk only has a couple MB available. It should have 10G, 17G total.

Sys gave the note that I was running out of disk; opening the "Get Info" for that volume, I watched it go from several G to several MB in about 3 min. Am at 140M now; adding up the space occupied by the dirs on that volume gives about 8G of the 17G the volume is reporting as used. Obviously, something hidden. Swap?

TM is turned off. Lucky I read this, as its been off for some time.

I'd just created a volume w/ a newer OS, and migrated stuff over but came back because of an incompatibility. My home folder is (and has been for 5 years) on an external FW drive. ML has been on this machine since pre-release.

Most of my apps are on a different drive as well; only aliases are in the /Applications dir. The only apps that are there are OS-specific (ie Safari, utils, etc).

OmniDiskSweeper confirms this. Are there bash commands so I can view the invisible files? And why did I lose the space? It seemed to start after opening Mail, but can't say for sure.

Thanks,
Todd
     
P
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Oct 10, 2013, 04:05 AM
 
First run Disk Utility, as that sort of behavior can be related to a disk directory failing. If that's OK, you can start looking at where the space is going. The shell command you're probably looking for is "du", for disk usage. Move to root, type du -h to see what is using the space. Once you see something suspicious, move to that directory and type du -h again to see a further breakdown on the subdirectories.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
gradient
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Oct 11, 2013, 05:29 PM
 
Disk Inventory X is a pretty cool, and free, utility for getting a graphical representation of your disk usage.
     
justinkaisse  (op)
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Oct 13, 2013, 09:09 AM
 
Ohhhhh… we're liking DIX. It shows the invisibles.

There's a 1.2G file,
System/Library/Frameworks/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd.

osx - what is com.apple.coresymbolicationd in caches? - Ask Different
     
justinkaisse  (op)
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Oct 13, 2013, 09:31 AM
 
@P

Is there any way to order them, descending by size, and perhaps only the top dozen? I'm getting a listing of all my drives, which are… several.

OH just saw you are in Sweden. We've just discovered our Swedish roots; previously, we thought we were Estonian. You may know this, but hundreds of years ago (300 yrs, in our case) Swedes would go to, in addition to other places, Hiuumaa. The Eesti would call them, "Island People." We have Eesti friends here, and they were quizzical about our name; its obviously on gravestones on Eesti soil, but not really… Eesti.
     
shifuimam
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Oct 13, 2013, 03:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by gradient View Post
Disk Inventory X is a pretty cool, and free, utility for getting a graphical representation of your disk usage.
I'm a super big fan of JDiskReport. It's free and easier to read (IMO) than Disk Inventory X, and since it's written in Java, it's platform-agnostic.
Sell or send me your vintage Mac things if you don't want them.
     
P
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Oct 13, 2013, 03:26 PM
 
If the tool gradient showed you does what you want, use that. Getting the built-in command-line tools to do what you want can be tricky. That said, what you're asking for is doable. Try something like this:

du -xkd 1 | sort -gr

The x means do not browse other drives. The k means list in kilobytes (and not the megabytes and gigabytes from the other command, that's just for the sorting to work). The d 1 means depth 1, so it only shows the size of the folders in your current location - you can then move down into the big ones and look closer. The | means to take the output of that and use as the inout of the next command - sort, which does what it says on the tin. The -g means sort numerically (instead of alphabetically), and the r is reverse sort.

The OT bit: I remember a little of that from history class. Sweden had conquered what is today Finland early on, and when Estonia was threatened from the south, they basically considered Sweden the best possible overlord in the region and invited Sweden to take over in return for protection from the other powers around. Russia eventually took it when Sweden's power waned in the early 18th century, but Estonia was part of Sweden for 200 years, give or take.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
justinkaisse  (op)
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Oct 13, 2013, 07:53 PM
 
The /private directory has almost 5G of space; its /Dropbox. Shouldn't this be in some cloud somewhere, and not on my drive? Isn't that the point of having Dropbox?

I'm waiting for the jDiskReport to finish; whilst doing that, used the "du..." and that got me lots of good info.

Thanks, people!
     
P
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Oct 14, 2013, 08:45 AM
 
Dropbox will sync everything in it to all connected computers so it is always available. If you have 5 gigs in your Dropbox, you have 5 gigs used on every computer that you have connected.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Oct 14, 2013, 09:15 AM
 
Why would that be in /private, though?
     
gradient
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Oct 14, 2013, 11:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
I'm a super big fan of JDiskReport. It's free and easier to read (IMO) than Disk Inventory X, and since it's written in Java, it's platform-agnostic.
Nice, I'll check it out.
     
justinkaisse  (op)
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Oct 17, 2013, 08:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Why would that be in /private, though?
EXACTLY.

... P's response. Good to know.

So, it makes sense that on a new volume, its posting all those files... AND TAKING UP ALL MY SPACE.

Thanks, P, now makes sense.
( Last edited by justinkaisse; Oct 17, 2013 at 08:48 PM. Reason: missed P's recent comment)
     
justinkaisse  (op)
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Oct 17, 2013, 08:37 PM
 
I don't need a copy of my Dropbox on all my volumes. Now, its done it to /root/dropbox/ as well, so need to nip that in the bud. Two copies on the same volume...
( Last edited by justinkaisse; Oct 17, 2013 at 08:51 PM. Reason: redundant)
     
jacbec
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Oct 18, 2013, 04:20 PM
 
When I perform a backup with Carbon Copy Cloner, my HD (750GB) goes from 200GB available to 0 and I get a warning message that my disk is full. When I restart the 200GB free returns.
     
   
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