OS X10.10.3 "other" storage is 700+GB

[2010mini]

I just noticed the storage on my external drive is taken up by over 700gb of "other"
How do I get rid of this? Also when I delete files nothing shows up in the trash which is weird.

Please help. TIA

 

[mjohansen]

Im pretty sure its your photos. The new photo libraries doesn't show as photos.

 

[2010mini]

Im pretty sure its your photos. The new photo libraries doesn't show as photos.

Photos show up as 67gb which is the size of my iPhoto library. what on earth could cause other to swell to 700gb?

 

[macspecial]

Many types of files

Besides Audio, Film, Photo, Apps, Backups, there are many other types of files. I have an internal volume without a system on it. It has 280 GB of "other". That is normal for me, as in it I have install-files and big .dmg files of 300 GB. So that is perfectly all right. Even PDFs and Word Files are "other". A system-file would also be covered by "other". With some effort you can locate the other areas.

 

[2010mini]

Besides Audio, Film, Photo, Apps, Backups, there are many other types of files. I have an internal volume without a system on it. It has 280 GB of "other". That is normal for me, as in it I have install-files and big .dmg files of 300 GB. So that is perfectly all right. Even PDFs and Word Files are "other". A system-file would also be covered by "other". With some effort you can locate the other areas.

The only think on my external drive is iTunes, iPhoto and timemachine. No other apps uses the external drive.

 

[macspecial]

Turn on visibility of invisible files and see...

It is rather certain you have a file/folder on the disk, that is set as invisible. This could be a sparsebundle.dmg that TimeMachine uses, due to FileVault. If your TM-Folder is 680GB then the sparsebundle would be about the same size. Let me know if you use FileVault, and how big any invisibly set folders are, that you can make visible briefly with many utility programs.

 

[2010mini]

It is rather certain you have a file/folder on the disk, that is set as invisible. This could be a sparsebundle.dmg that TimeMachine uses, due to FileVault. If your TM-Folder is 680GB then the sparsebundle would be about the same size. Let me know if you use FileVault, and how big any invisibly set folders are, that you can make visible briefly with many utility programs.

Oh wow, I forgot about that. Yes the size is probably my old TM backup. I don't use this external drive as the TM backup anymore. Is this why Yosemite has it as other?

I don't use FileVault and I do not see sparsbundle on the drive either. Just the Backups.backupdb folder which I can't remove because I do not have permission for some items. This is frustrating