Hard drive space disappearing

[Jochen K]

Hello,

I know that this question has been asked a hundred times, but I have tried every remedy (disabling Time Machine, disabling and deleting local snapshots, scanning the disk with OmniDiskSweeper and DaisyDisk) -- to no avail.

To be a bit more precise I am running Yosemite Beta 2 on a MacBook Pro with 256 GB SDD. Bootcamp eats up about 60 GB, so I am left with approximately 190 GB. DaisyDisk reports that there are 140 GB in use, but the reported folder sizes add up to only just 80 GB, which is what OmniDiskSweeper reports, too. "About My Mac" says the same as DaisyDisk, reporting that there are about 100 GB (!) of movies and images, although I have virtually none on my HD.

I have then moved 50 GB of data to an external HD, which freed up about only 10 GB on my SSD, as reported by e.g. the Finder. This must surely be a bug in Yosemite!

(I wanted to purchase Bioshock Infinite in the App Store, but was confronted with the error message that there was not enough disk space to install it in the first place.)

Having ruled out Time Machine as the culprit (have I really?) I am lost.

I would appreciate any help!

Best wishes
Jochen

 

[MisterMe]

Have you emptied your Trash?

 

[Jochen K]

Have you emptied your Trash?

Hi,

yes I have. I have also rebooted to erase local snapshots after disabling Time Machine ...

Best wishes
Jochen

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi,

yes I have. I have also rebooted to erase local snapshots after disabling Time Machine ...

Best wishes
Jochen

Ignore that about this Mac graphic in Yosemite as it is all jacked up.

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

Run this command in Terminal (takes a couple minutes to complete) and post up the results. It will show all the base folders with space used in GB.

Those other utilities you mentioned won't show a lot of hidden and system files.

 

[Jochen K]

Hello,

yes, this helped -- but only partially. The command listed the following (left).
So I drilled deeper until it was clear that ~/.Trash/.MobileBackups.trash was really huge (52 GB). I deleted that file (or I hope so; I tried rm -r, which gave me a "permission denied" and then I cut the file -- from within PathFinder -- and emptied the clipboard) which instantly gave me (only) 30 GB of additional disk space. Another run of your command produced the output on the right. Minus 52 GB! But all other programs report a free disc space of roughly 80 GB; since the partition is about 190 GB I expected about 110 GB of free space.

Could it be that there is a problem with my way of "deleting" the above-mentioned file? The trash seems empty, but I wouldn´t bet on it ...

Anyway, thanks for your very helpful input!

Best wishes
Jochen

 

[Weaselboy]

Hello,

yes, this helped -- but only partially. The command listed the following (left).
So I drilled deeper until it was clear that ~/.Trash/.MobileBackups.trash was really huge (52 GB). I deleted that file (or I hope so; I tried rm -r, which gave me a "permission denied" and then I cut the file -- from within PathFinder -- and emptied the clipboard) which instantly gave me (only) 30 GB of additional disk space. Another run of your command produced the output on the right. Minus 52 GB! But all other programs report a free disc space of roughly 80 GB; since the partition is about 190 GB I expected about 110 GB of free space.

Could it be that there is a problem with my way of "deleting" the above-mentioned file? The trash seems empty, but I wouldn´t bet on it ...

Anyway, thanks for your very helpful input!

Best wishes
Jochen

I think you are in good shape now.

Here is what happened. When you have TM turned on and delete a file it does not really delete but rather gets moved to /.Mobilebackups. OS X is supposed to manage that space and will start to delete data from there if your disk approaches 80% full.

If you turn off TM that data gets moved to /.MobileBackups.trash where it is later deleted. Sometimes if the files are locked or still in use (I had this problem after a Crashplan app update) that folder will lockup and not empty and the result is the issue you had.

It looks like somehow you got the /.MobileBackups.trash junk moved into the trash but it remained hung up there also. See my comments in this thread. I could only kill this off by using the Trashit app to force empty the trash. Looks like you got the same thing done in Pathfinder (nice trick!).

If you have run that Terminal command again and it shows the space reclaimed, I think we can pronounce you healed. What if you look in Disk Util for the partition what does it show?

 

[Jochen K]

If you have run that Terminal command again and it shows the space reclaimed, I think we can pronounce you healed. What if you look in Disk Util for the partition what does it show?

Hello Weaselboy,

I got this result. Still 30 GB missing (in my calculation). I wouldn't worry about that -- after all, it´s just disk space -- but I still want to install Bioshock, and there still isn´t enough space. Sounds a little bit childish, doesn´t it?

Best wishes
Jochen

PS. "Verfügbar" = Available, "Belegt" = Used, in case your German ist a bit rusty.

 

[Jochen K]

Hello,

now MobileBackups.trash was back (Pathfinder didn't do the trick). So I tried the method you described in that other thread which seemed to work fine. Free disk space hasn't changed, however.

Best wishes
Jochen

 

[w0lf]

Did you try sudo rm -r ?

 

[Jochen K]

Did you try sudo rm -r ?

Dear w0lf,

yes, I did that. But it didn´t work out ("permission denied"). I have now, however, resolved my problem: I had to repair my HD from the Recovery partition. Now there are 110 GB of free space, as it should be.

I should have thought earlier of this possibility (I am around since Mac OS X 10.4).

But I thank you all, and especially Weaselboy, for their great help. I couldn´t have sorted it out without your support!

Best wishes
Jochen

 

[Weaselboy]

Hello,

now MobileBackups.trash was back (Pathfinder didn't do the trick). So I tried the method you described in that other thread which seemed to work fine. Free disk space hasn't changed, however.

Best wishes
Jochen

Dear w0lf,

yes, I did that. But it didn´t work out ("permission denied"). I have now, however, resolved my problem: I had to repair my HD from the Recovery partition. Now there are 110 GB of free space, as it should be.

I should have thought earlier of this possibility (I am around since Mac OS X 10.4).

But I thank you all, and especially Weaselboy, for their great help. I couldn´t have sorted it out without your support!

Best wishes
Jochen

Disk repair was going to be next suggestion. Sounds like you had two issues going on at the same time. Glad you got it figured out.

Background Crashplan app updates was what was causing this /.Mobilebackups.trash issue for me. You don't happen to be using Crashplan do you?

 

[Jochen K]

Background Crashplan app updates was what was causing this /.Mobilebackups.trash issue for me. You don't happen to be using Crashplan do you?

Hello Weaselboy,

I did indeed use Crashplan but have given up on it since it did not satisfy my needs. Chances are that there are some files left over (none in my startup items). I wouldn´t suggest to use Crasplan in conjunction with Yosemite, at least not at that time ...

Best wishes
Jochen

 

[Weaselboy]

Hello Weaselboy,

I did indeed use Crashplan but have given up on it since it did not satisfy my needs. Chances are that there are some files left over (none in my startup items). I wouldn´t suggest to use Crasplan in conjunction with Yosemite, at least not at that time ...

Best wishes
Jochen

That's interesting. Thanks for getting back to me. You are about the fourth person now I have run into on the forums with this exact issue from Crashplan. When I first discovered it, I submitted a bug report to Crashplan so hopefully they will have this fixed before their next app update.

I too ditched Crashplan in favor of using the backup app Arq with Amazon S3 for backup.