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100G of hidden files?

D

dedub

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 16, 2008
6
0
I'm not a mac guru by no means but I've been behind this one for 3 years now. Poking around I see that my HD has only 13G's left. I start adding up all my folders... Library, System, Apps, ect and only come up with just over 100G. Where are there 100g of files hidden? Am I missing something somewhere?
Thanks in advance
Darrin
 
dedub said:
I'm not a mac guru by no means but I've been behind this one for 3 years now. Poking around I see that my HD has only 13G's left. I start adding up all my folders... Library, System, Apps, ect and only come up with just over 100G. Where are there 100g of files hidden? Am I missing something somewhere?
Thanks in advance
Darrin
Click to expand...

Do you, or have you ever ran bootcamp? Perhaps you have a defective partition that you can not see in finder. 100g is a very large chunk.
 
I just downloaded and ran Onyx. I ran every cleanup utility built in but it did not clean up much if any at all. I have never run bootcamp but I do run parallels. I did check that image size and it was 49G. But that is part of my total space used on the HD and was accounted for. Maybe time to buy cleanmymac?
 
OK, cleanmymac found about 3G of cache stuff, no where near the 100G of mysterious space taken up somewhere. Does anyone have any idea? I can only count my folders so many times. I'm pretty sure I'm spot on with what is visible in Finder....

Darrin
 
I ran MacKeeper, and it found ALOT of stuff that it calls Binary Duplicates, or something like that. Programs are written for both CPUs that Macs have used. Both are installed everytime I install a new program, even though I only need the Intel version. You might be surprised how much space is wasted that way!
 
Are you the only one that uses your computer? 100GB sounds like a hidden porn stash to me.
 
Elppa,
Thanks! that was perfect. What I found was some type of backup folder under volumes with 95+G. Seems to be duplicate of my users folder. Probably from when I used to run Time machine. Not sure why I cant find it in Finder but at least I have a start. I do regular backups using CCC now so I'm guessing I can whack that info and gain some space back.
 
dedub said:
Elppa,
Thanks! that was perfect. What I found was some type of backup folder under volumes with 95+G. Seems to be duplicate of my users folder. Probably from when I used to run Time machine. Not sure why I cant find it in Finder but at least I have a start. I do regular backups using CCC now so I'm guessing I can whack that info and gain some space back.
Click to expand...

Finder only shows "relevant" folders that would be used by a user.

System directories like /Volumes, /bin, /etc, /usr, and so on are hidden in Finder.
 
Vylen said:
Finder only shows "relevant" folders that would be used by a user.

System directories like /Volumes, /bin, /etc, /usr, and so on are hidden in Finder.
Click to expand...
you would certainly not expect 100GB of files to be kept in those directories. /Volumes does not count towards used HDD space as they are only Aliases. (unless you royally stufff up haha).
 
dedub said:
Elppa,
Thanks! that was perfect. What I found was some type of backup folder under volumes with 95+G. Seems to be duplicate of my users folder. Probably from when I used to run Time machine. Not sure why I cant find it in Finder but at least I have a start. I do regular backups using CCC now so I'm guessing I can whack that info and gain some space back.
Click to expand...

In Disk Inventory you should still be able to right click on the item and choose “Reveal in Finder”.

You can also add a “Reveal in Finder” button to the toolbar.
 
Reveal in Finder is exactly what I'm doing. Time machine boggled my mind and I ended up messing with something I shouldn't of about 2 years ago so I shut if off. Seems there was a backup folder hidden with my whole HD replicated. I'm still lost as hell because the files were current? I started deleted the folders one at a time just to see what would happen...
I started gaining space back and the folders never reappeared.
I'm taking slow so I don't delete something I can't get back.
 
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