How to find what's taking up disk usage

[DarkSorrow82]

How do I find the location of the Backup files? These are taking 20GB of space on my drive. I'd like to move them to the external drive. I have a feeling they are my iPhone and iPad backups. It would also be nice to find out what's taking up Movies since my Movie folder is blank!

 

[MacManiac76]

The location of iPhone and iPad backups would be in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup. Check this folder and see if it adds up to your 20 GB of Backup files.

 

[JTToft]

I'm betting the 20 GB backups are local Time Machine snapshots that it keeps as far as space permits. They will be automatically deleted if the space is required. The location is:

/.MobileBackups

More info: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015

You can disable it by running this command in Terminal:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

I also recommend the application DaisyDisk to create an overview of what's taking up the space on your drive.
https://daisydiskapp.com

 

[DarkSorrow82]

Thanks for the application link. This seems pretty cool! I also woke up and checked the disk usage and it was back down to 2GB. ODD SMH!

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for the application link. This seems pretty cool! I also woke up and checked the disk usage and it was back down to 2GB. ODD SMH!

Just a couple comments. First, that storage readout is notoriously inaccurate. If you run the command below in Terminal and wait 20-30 minutes, it will reindex Spotlight and the storage readout will be more accurate (for a while).

If you turn Time Machine off briefly then back on again, you should see that Backups space do down to near zero. Or you can just ignore it like JTToft mentioned.

 

[DarkSorrow82]

I'm betting the 20 GB backups are local Time Machine snapshots that it keeps as far as space permits. They will be automatically deleted if the space is required. The location is:

/.MobileBackups

More info: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015

You can disable it by running this command in Terminal:

sudu tmutil disablelocal

I also recommend the application DaisyDisk to create an overview of what's taking up the space on your drive.
https://daisydiskapp.com

sudu tmutil disablelocal
-bash: sudu: command not found

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Dark, there is an efficient app that shows what and where takes up your disk space, it's DiskWave (free).

 

[Weaselboy]

sudu tmutil disablelocal
-bash: sudu: command not found

sudo tmutil disablelocal

JT had a small typo in his command there. sudo not sudu.

I would not disable it though. It can be a useful feature if you need to restore something you deleted when away from your Time Machine backup disk.

 

[DarkSorrow82]

sudo tmutil disablelocal

JT had a small typo in his command there. sudo not sudu.

I would not disable it though. It can be a useful feature if you need to restore something you deleted when away from your Time Machine backup disk.

Thank you

 

[JTToft]

sudu tmutil disablelocal
-bash: sudu: command not found

JT had a small typo in his command there. sudo not sudu.

- Yes. I apologise immensely for that. Thanks to Weaselboy for stepping in and correcting.

 

[Weaselboy]

- Yes. I apologise immensely for that. Thanks to Weaselboy for stepping in and correcting.

Pfftt... I can hardly type a sentence without a typo.