Resolved 2012 cMBP reporting incorrect free space

[Obsidian6]

On my 2012 Macbook Pro (Classic, non-retina, 2.7Ghz i7) my boot drive (a Crucial M4 256GB SSD) is reporting a mere 23.28GB of free space and 231.9GB used when in reality I have less than 110GB of data on the boot drive (according to Omnidisksweeper)

I have tried everything I can think of to try and resolve the discrepancy but I cannot for the life of me figure out what is causing it. I've even gone as far as reinstalling the OS (though I did not do a clean install, that is my last resort) and even that didn't address it. There is nearly 200GB of mysteriously missing space from my drive, and I don't know how to reclaim it.

I'm hoping it's just something simple and I'm going to laugh at how easy it is to fix. Any ideas?

 

[dmccloud]

I'd recommend running Disk Utility and the "verify Disk" option. I've seen issues with incorrect free space in the past, and using Disk Utility from the recovery partition (hold R at startup) fixes it every time.

 

[rw3]

sudo tmutil disablelocal

 

[Weaselboy]

Try the disk check dmccloud suggested. If that does not work enter the command below in Terminal then post up the output. This will show the size of all your root folders in GB and we can help you out. OmniDS does not show system file sizes so is not giving you the full picture.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

 

[niteflyr]

More than likely local snapshots are using up your free space. They will delete as necessary.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14329

 

[chrfr]

More than likely local snapshots are using up your free space. They will delete as necessary.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14329

They should be showing up as "Backups", though. Still a likely source of the disk usage.

 

[Weaselboy]

More than likely local snapshots are using up your free space. They will delete as necessary.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14329

They should be showing up as "Backups", though. Still a likely source of the disk usage.

Could be. Usually those Time Machine local backups will show in that purple "Backups" section in OP's screenshot though.

I have seen cases where the local backups get deleted from /.Mobilebackups to /.MobileBackups.trash and they get hung up there. Then the purple shows zero put we have space used in /.MobileBackups.trash. Read my post #11 in this thread.

 

[chrfr]

OmniDS does not show system file sizes so is not giving you the full picture.

OmniDiskSweeper does indeed show all directory sizes. Local Time Machine backups, however, are shown as a separate volume.

 

[Weaselboy]

OmniDiskSweeper does indeed show all directory sizes. Local Time Machine backups, however, are shown as a separate volume.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Go read the thread I linked and my post #11 in that thread. I posted screenshots in that thread showing OmniDS does not show the folders we are discussing here, as well as other hidden folders such as the Spotlight index.

The hidden folders /.Mobilebackups and /.MobileBackups.trash we are discussing here are not separate volumes, they are just hidden folders.

They are not shown by OmniDS and they are shown by the Terminal command I posted.

If you run OmniDS as root with this command, then you can see those hidden folders.

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

 

[chrfr]

I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

In the"Drive List" Window, OmniDiskSweeper shows an additional volume which is actually the contents of .MobileBackups.
The OS does treat .MobileBackups as a separate volume even though it isn't. On a computer with local backups enabled, look in /Volumes.

 

[Weaselboy]

In the"Drive List" Window, OmniDiskSweeper shows an additional volume which is actually the contents of .MobileBackups.
The OS does treat .MobileBackups as a separate volume even though it isn't. On a computer with local backups enabled, look in /Volumes.

Ah.... I do see that.

Still not real helpful here though IMO. If the problem is those /.Mobilebackups getting hung up in /.MobileBackups.trash, we won't see it in OmniDS. Also, like I said it does not show everything. Nothing in green in the screenshot shows up in OmniDS (aside form the /.Mobilebackups work around you mentioned).

 

[chrfr]

Still not real helpful here though IMO.

I do agree on that. It seems like Omni could have figured out a way to report that differently since the app will show the space used, if a user knows where to look. Oh well.

 

[Obsidian6]

I'd recommend running Disk Utility and the "verify Disk" option. I've seen issues with incorrect free space in the past, and using Disk Utility from the recovery partition (hold R at startup) fixes it every time.

I've tried this a number of times before posting here with no success

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Did that too a while back.

Try the disk check dmccloud suggested. If that does not work enter the command below in Terminal then post up the output. This will show the size of all your root folders in GB and we can help you out. OmniDS does not show system file sizes so is not giving you the full picture.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I will do this and report back.

----------

Ok so it sounds like the MobileBackups is hogging up space even though it's been disabled.

1	/.DocumentRevisions-V100
1	/.fseventsd
120	/.MobileBackups.trash
1	/.Spotlight-V100
0	/.Trashes
0	/.vol
28	/Applications
1	/bin
0	/cores
1	/dev
1	/home
12	/Library
1	/net
0	/Network
6	/private
1	/sbin
5	/System
44	/Users
1	/usr
1	/Volumes
214	/
214	total

 

[Weaselboy]

I will do this and report back.

I was starting to think we had lost you.

Post that info and we'll get you fixed up.

----------

Ok so it sounds like the MobileBackups is hogging up space even though it's been disabled.

120	/.MobileBackups.trash

Bingo!

What has happened is when you disable Time Machine's local backups they get put in that /.MobileBackups.trash folder where they sit for the few minutes it takes for the OS to delete the files. For some reason, sometimes this trash file does not empty and you have your issue.

Run this command in Terminal and it will move /.MobileBackups.trash to a folder called TrashMe on your Desktop. Now drag TrashMe into the trash then empty the trash. If the trash won't empty (it probably won't), use the app TrashIt to force empty the trash. That should fix you up.

sudo mv /.MobileBackups.trash ~/Desktop/Trashme

 

[Obsidian6]

Yeah sorry about that, it's been a hectic week to say the least! I didn't have time to look into the issue, I've got a million and one design projects I'm working on and I just had to keep on working.

I truly appreciate any assistance though, I know I can always turn to the MR community for help when I need it.

----------

Oh my God it's working, I'm watching my space slowly increase as it's dumping those files.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! This has been plaguing me for months and with all of my Apple knowledge and access to Geniuses I couldn't figure that out.

If you were close by I'd buy you a beer right now. Or 10.

 

[Weaselboy]

Oh my God it's working, I'm watching my space slowly increase as it's dumping those files.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! This has been plaguing me for months and with all of my Apple knowledge and access to Geniuses I couldn't figure that out.

If you were close by I'd buy you a beer right now. Or 10.

Nice! Gad we got you fixed up.

You don't happen to use Crashplan do you? I have seen a Crashplan app update get stuck in that hidden trash folder and cause this.

 

[Obsidian6]

I do use Crashplan actually, I like the service, but it does have some impact on my system from a performance standpoint, I've adjusted it now so that it doesn't interfere much anymore, but there are times that it makes things quite slow.

So now the finder reports 150GB free which more in line with what I would expect, but disk utility and my space reporting apps (like iStat Menus) say there is 87GB free. I'm guessing that just can't be resolved.

At any rate it's a far better situation than I was in to begin with.

Do I need to use the Time Machine mobile backups feature anyways? My time machine drive is always connected to my macbook pro when it's at home.

 

[Weaselboy]

I do use Crashplan actually, I like the service, but it does have some impact on my system from a performance standpoint, I've adjusted it now so that it doesn't interfere much anymore, but there are times that it makes things quite slow.

Thanks for getting back to me. This is interesting. You are now the fourth person, including me, who ran across this issue with Crashplan. I'm going to piece together a long bug report to Crashplan on this.

I also use Crashsplan and have ratcheted down the backups to every four hours and I don't notice any impact at all.

The way that /.Mobilebackups space works is anything that is deleted on your Mac goes into that space so you can restore a deleted file even if you emptied the trash. If you have those local backups on and say delete a 2GB video, you would see the /.Mobilebackups folder increase by 2GB, even after you empty trash. This is normal.

If you run this Terminal command or just turn Time Machine off, it deletes /.Mobilebackups and moves it to /.Mobilebackups.trash and then deletes the files after a few minutes.

sudo tmutil disablelocal

What seemed to happen with Crashplan on my system, and I suspect yours, was Crashplan pushed out an app update silently in the background and deleted the old version, which put the old Crashplan app files in /.Mobilebackups. Then at some point you turned off Time Machine then turned it back on (or not) and the Crashplan files went into /.Mobilebackups.trash. For whatever reason, OS X locked those Crashplan files and would not allow /.Mobilebackups.trash to empty normally. The Terminal commands were the only way I could get the space back.

So now the finder reports 150GB free which more in line with what I would expect, but disk utility and my space reporting apps (like iStat Menus) say there is 87GB free. I'm guessing that just can't be resolved.

Run this again and see what it says now. If you have Time Machine off, Finder and DU space used should match. With TM on, they won't as Finder does not count the /.Mobilebackups space.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

Do I need to use the Time Machine mobile backups feature anyways? My time machine drive is always connected to my macbook pro when it's at home.

It just gives you a way to restore a deleted file if you are away from your TM backup. If that is not important to you, you can turn it off with this Terminal command. Just be aware if you ever turn TM off then back on, you will need to rerun the command.

sudo tmutil disablelocal

 

[Obsidian6]

So I thought I would go ahead and run the script again and clear out more of the old backup files and sure enough got back up to 200GB of free space on the boot drive (what I thought there should be) then by accident I reenabled MobileBackups and it immediately dropped to 145GB of free space, with no way to undo what I just did. The space is just MIA presently.

What did I just do?

 

[Weaselboy]

So I thought I would go ahead and run the script again and clear out more of the old backup files and sure enough got back up to 200GB of free space on the boot drive (what I thought there should be) then by accident I reenabled MobileBackups and it immediately dropped to 145GB of free space, with no way to undo what I just did. The space is just MIA presently.

What did I just do?

Let's do this. Turn Time Machine off then back on to clear out local backups.

Then run this in Terminal to turn off local backups.

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Now do this in Terminal followed by dragging TrashMe to trash then the TrashIt app routine again to empty trash.

sudo mv /.MobileBackups.trash ~/Desktop/Trashme

Final step run this again to confirm space used looks good.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

 

[Obsidian6]

The strange thing is that I get the error that there is no MobileBackups folder, because I tried to retrace my steps based on the methods you showed me earlier. So the space just vanished. Lol it's strange!

 

[Weaselboy]

The strange thing is that I get the error that there is no MobileBackups folder, because I tried to retrace my steps based on the methods you showed me earlier. So the space just vanished. Lol it's strange!

If it is saying there is no /.MobileBackups.trash folder, that is good. It means there should be no space missing because of this issue now.

So does DU and Finder appear to show the correct amount of free space now?

 

[Obsidian6]

If it is saying there is no /.MobileBackups.trash folder, that is good. It means there should be no space missing because of this issue now.

So does DU and Finder appear to show the correct amount of free space now?

What I don't understand though is why did it immediately drop from 209GB free to 147GB free as soon as I enabled MobileBackups by mistake. I tried to undo this action but the space remains at 147GB. So my question is, where did those 62GB of space disappear to if there is no MobileBackups.trash file?

 

[Weaselboy]

What I don't understand though is why did it immediately drop from 209GB free to 147GB free as soon as I enabled MobileBackups by mistake. I tried to undo this action but the space remains at 147GB. So my question is, where did those 62GB of space disappear to if there is no MobileBackups.trash file?

When you accidentally turned it back on, was this in the middle of deleting /.MobileBackups.trash (or something else) maybe? With it on, deleted trash goes to /.MobileBackups again... so that may be what happened. Then when you turned it off it deleted like it is supposed to and did not get stuck in /.MobileBackups.trash because we had already fixed that.

So are you still missing space? If you are, run this again and let's take a look.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

 

[Obsidian6]

Well see that's the strange thing, I would assume that I'm missing space because I saw the Finder report 209GB of free space when it's now only reporting 147GB (not to sound displeased because I was barely above 20GB free before this).

So was that 209GB incorrect? Because I don't see anything too odd here.

1	/.DocumentRevisions-V100
1	/.fseventsd
4	/.MobileBackups
1	/.Spotlight-V100
0	/.Trashes
0	/.vol
28	/Applications
1	/bin
0	/cores
1	/dev
1	/home
12	/Library
1	/net
0	/Network
6	/private
1	/sbin
5	/System
50	/Users
1	/usr
1	/Volumes
103	/
103	total