Reported drive space usage differs from what Photos shows

[unixfool]

I've been developing a huge cache of photos and videos going back to 2005 - I've imported maybe 2/3rds of the files into Photos on my MBA. I recently configured my MBA to synch those photos to iCloud.

I wanted to continue my efforts on another system, a Mac Mini. The Mini wasn't synching photos with iCloud until maybe an hour ago.

I know that there's 63 GB of photos and videos on my MBA that's synched to iCloud. I configured my MBA to synch photos with iCloud, and when it finished, I checked to see how much drive space the files were consuming. I opened About This Mac then went to the Storage tab, where it breaks down the data types and the amount of space each is using. When hovering over "Photos", it reports 96.6 GB of files in storage.

When I open Photos, select All Photos, select all files, right-click and select Get Info, the Info window reports 63.5 GB of files.

I'm confused at the discrepancy. I do have several other photos and video files in my home directory but not 33 GB worth.

I'm more concerned about the discrepancy than the actual consumption of most of my drive space (the files will not stay on the Mini in the future).

Does anyone know what's going on with this?

 

[Slartibart]

Which version of MacOS? Do you have activated "optimize storage" for your Mac? Any shared albums you participate in?

But more importantly: you are not aware of the search function on MR, are you? 😇🤓

 

[unixfool]

Which version of MacOS? Do you have activated "optimize storage" for your Mac? Any shared albums you participate in?

But more importantly: you are not aware of the search function on MR, are you? 😇🤓

v12.5

Yes, I have "Optimize Storage" enabled. There is one shared album but the album doesn't have 33 GB of data.

Yes, I'm aware of the search function on MR (been here for years and I'm highly cogizant of what searching entails), but I found not a single thing that answers exactly why I'm seeing so large of a discrepancy. Yes, I searched. I also perused the suggested posts that were presented to me before I posted.

Do you have any other questions you'd like to share?

Since you're being highly opinionated on this, maybe you can mention a few specific posts (not that search result dump) that you think I may have missed.

Nothing in the results you posted have anything directly related to what I'm seeing (other than my own post, which is showing in the results).

I don't think you checked those results before you posted. 🤣

 

[wilberforce]

Interestingly, my Photos Get Info shows 27GB, which exactly matches the amount reported for photos in About my Mac Storage. My "Photos Library.photoslibrary" file is 37GB in size, though. I have optimize turned on and use iCloud syncing. I only use MacOS Photos for iPhone photos.
I also have nearly 400GB in my Pictures folder (DSLR photos), which is not reported as photos, but as documents in About my Mac Storage.
Doesn't answer your question, just gives another (confusing) data point?
Long ago I decided trying to make storage numbers add up would just drive one crazy. There are actually some reasons it won't add up, like cloning and caching.

 

[HDFan]

Long ago I decided trying to make storage numbers add up would just drive one crazy.

There must be hundreds (or more?) posts about storage numbers that don't make sense. Read one just today about someone deleting 250 GB of data but not seeing any changes in total storage. Unless something isn't working properly it isn't worth your time trying figuring it out due to the obscure dynamic way storage is managed behind the scenes.

 

[Slartibart]

Do you have any other questions you'd like to share?

Make sure that you have turned off Content Caching on your MBA.

Any image attached to messages, email or cached images in the webbrowser etc. is added to the storage count for photos on MacOS. Besides clearing out the caches per program (e.g. Chrome, Safari, etc.)-
you can simply create a smart folder to find all images on your MBA.

Or you use one of the disk usage utilities that visualize the size of files and folders as treemaps.

That should allow you to locate any image outside Apple’s Photos, get an accurate estimate of the total storage occupied by them, and clean the used space.

Besides that you can check via the terminal using brctl or a utility like iCloudStatus wether the transfer to iCloud is really finished.

If its, use e.g. Onyx or TinkerTool to clear out caches, run maintenance, etc. - and/or clear the system caches manually (that is the ones not altered by either of these tools).

Having looked into/done all the above, please restart and check again.



EDIT: I totally forgot - I humbly suggest search to get detailed information regarding the how to of the above. 🤓

 

[unixfool]

EDIT: I totally forgot - I humbly suggest search to get detailed information regarding the how to of the above. 🤓

I humbly suggest you quit saying I didn't search when I already said I did.

You also said you searched and supplied your search results but NONE of that helped explain what was going on and ALL of it was just random things that had nothing to do with my particular issue.

You still haven't demonstrated how your search was any better than mine and you still haven't provided how you'd have searched for this.

That info up above may assist but it plainly has nothing to do with the search results you posted. You did a search just as I did, using roughly the same search words, and the results showed nothing other than general things. Until you can demonstrate how you can do it better, you should just stop with this.

In fact, we'll just end this now. Gonna use that famous ignore feature.

 

[unixfool]

There must be hundreds (or more?) posts about storage numbers that don't make sense. Read one just today about someone deleting 250 GB of data but not seeing any changes in total storage. Unless something isn't working properly it isn't worth your time trying figuring it out due to the obscure dynamic way storage is managed behind the scenes.

Yeah, I've noticed that lots of folks have asked similar questions. Was hoping that I wasn't searching correctly was the reason I wasn't able to find anything. I'm now thinking that there aren't any answers