My hard drive is full!

[Weaselboy]

44 /.MobileBackups

Here is a big part of the issue. This is 44GB of space space used by Time Machine's local snapshots. You can just ignore it if you want, and OS X will start to shrink it down when the drive gets close to 80% full. Or if you like, you can turn TM off briefly, then back on, and that will erase that space back to zero.

You can confirm afterwards by running this command.

sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

All reindexing Spotlight does is hopefully correct those incorrect readouts in that Storage screen, but it won't change the total space used shown there. That readout gets its data from the Spotlight index and for some reason it gets corrupted. It does not really hurt anything other than showing wrong info in that screen.

Does 124GB total used sound about right for your personal data in the User account(s)?

You can use this to drill down a little in your own user account to see where the space is going.

sudo du -hs ~/

5 /lost+found

This 5GB in Lost and found is a little concerning. That comes up when you have file system corruption and the OS fixes the issue with the fsck command and moves recovered files/data to that folder. You might look in there and see if you want to keep anything, otherwise you can delete that 5GB from the folder.

 

[Stupotpot]

Here is a big part of the issue. This is 44GB of space space used by Time Machine's local snapshots. You can just ignore it if you want, and OS X will start to shrink it down when the drive gets close to 80% full. Or if you like, you can turn TM off briefly, then back on, and that will erase that space back to zero.

You can confirm afterwards by running this command.

sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

All reindexing Spotlight does is hopefully correct those incorrect readouts in that Storage screen, but it won't change the total space used shown there. That readout gets its data from the Spotlight index and for some reason it gets corrupted. It does not really hurt anything other than showing wrong info in that screen.

Does 124GB total used sound about right for your personal data in the User account(s)?

You can use this to drill down a little in your own user account to see where the space is going.

sudo du -hs ~/

This 5GB in Lost and found is a little concerning. That comes up when you have file system corruption and the OS fixes the issue with the fsck command and moves recovered files/data to that folder. You might look in there and see if you want to keep anything, otherwise you can delete that 5GB from the folder.

Thanks for your help with this! Where can I find the lost+found folder?

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for your help with this! Where can I find the lost+found folder?

/lost+found

You can see it in that Terminal output earlier. Just click the Desktop then click the Go menu then go to folder and paste this path in and return and you should see it.

 

[Stupotpot]

I'd missed the / out of the Go To path! Thanks for your help with this - that file was last modified Oct 2014 so glad to gain those 5GB back!

I've got one more year to pay my MacBook off - after that, I'm definitely going for more storage...never thought I'd be scrimping with 256GB storage!

Oh and I just realised I had the majority of Game of Thrones season 3 and 4 downloaded...there's 25GB back too!

I really should pay more attention!