Resolved Drive Space Remaining?

[GooberMan]

On my Macbook Pro Retina updated to the latest OS when I click the Apple icon in the upper left to see how much space I have on my hard drive it says I have 180 of 250 GB free, but beneath that it shows 120 GB being taken up by apps and the little graph seems to illustrate that with nowhere close to 180 GB free.



So one of them is a liar, but which one?

 

[maflynn]

Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space.

If you run it with sudo (As shown below), it will include some system files that it woud not normally have access to scan. That is a more accurate representation of what's consuming your drive.

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

Another option is to use this terminal command
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I prefer to redirect it to a text file (this puts it in your Documents folder
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g / > ~/Documents/du.txt

Like the sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper command, it will scan all directories, but produce a text file as opposed to showing the results in a window

 

[GooberMan]

I've attached a screenshot of the storage it shows. Something doesn't add up.

Also, I forgot about the disk utility app, which shows 172 GB remaining on the partition, and then when I right click on the disk in the finder it says only 67 GB has been used.

So it seems I indeed probably have closer to that 180 GB free, and it's just the graph in that image that is wrong.

 

[maflynn]

I never go by the included tools, they really don't show what's consuming my drive. I prefer the steps I mentioned above. That way I get a full and accurate accounting of used space.

 

[GooberMan]

Thanks for the replies maflynn, I remember I had purchased Disk Doctor from the app store, which I hadn't re-installed since I did a fresh upgrade to Yosemite. I downloaded it again and it's showing 180 GB free.