[Closed] Mac help- 'others' taking up almost whole hard drive

I had a problem a while back where a log file somewhere had gone a bit rogue and grown to epic proportions. Its a few years ago so can't remember the specifics but it was a 'hidden file' so I needed to make hidden files visible in the finder to locate it and delete it

Sounds like a good start! I've looked at the 'users' folder and it's 100GB, but the individual folders within add up to a fraction of that, about 23GB in fact..

How do I make hidden files visible?

You need to install CleanMyMac, it will show whats taking up the space.

The runaway log file per @maccruiskeen would be my first guess as well.

To make hidden files visible open the Terminal app and type:

[i]defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
[/i]

Then restart the Finder (reboot, or press Option and click Finder in the dock and click Restart).

To find large files, go to Finder, bring up a search box (Command+F), and then in the filter area (probably says "Kind" right now) click, select Other, double-click File size, then in the next box select "is greater than" and in last drop-down box select "GB". Then type in some number in the search field - start with greater than 5GB. Your search should look like this:

[url= https://preview.ibb.co/mYvggm/Screenshot_2018_01_18_07_14_58.pn g" target="_blank">https://preview.ibb.co/mYvggm/Screenshot_2018_01_18_07_14_58.pn g"/> [/img][/url]

Good luck!

You need to install CleanMyMac, it will show whats taking up the space.

Tried this, not enough space on the disc to download it! 🙂

The runaway log file per @maccruiskeen would be my first guess as well.

To make hidden files visible open the Terminal app and type:

I'll try this..

Tried this, not enough space on the disc to download it!

That was the issue for me too - as fast you deleted files to make space the rogue log seemed to swell to fill it

Omni DiskSweeper is a very simple little program to see where your space has gone. Shows hidden files and you can delete them from in the app

Download seems to only by 2.1 Mb so hopefully you can download it OK;
https://www.omnigroup.com/more

Time Machine (if enabled) creates temporary backup files on the hard drive which are written to the backup disc when connected. Presumably if it never gets backed up they will keep growing. They are hidden files. When I've got a minute I'll see if I can recall where they are.

Not got the location yet but:
Launch Terminal on your Mac laptop.
Enter the following command into Terminal.
sudo tmutil disablelocal
Press Enter

That will disable time machine and delete local backup files.

Then check disc space again. If you have loads of space now, there's your culprit.

sudo tmutil enablelocal
will re-enable backups.

See also
http://osxdaily.com/2016/02/06/mac-startup-disk-almost-full-message-fix/

download [url= https://daisydiskapp.com/ ]daisy disk[/url] to a usb stick

Likes

If you're comfortable using the terminal:

Launch the terminal then type:
cd /
sudo du -h | sort -r -h > ~/filesizes.txt

This will take a long time (it might take over an hour, or even a day!) but once it's finished you'll have a list of all the file sizes in your home directory for your entire hard disk.

Interpreting the file could be difficult as it summarises directories as well as the files.

I use Grand Perspective for locating massive files.

It's pretty lightweight.

Opening Finder then hitting Cmnd Shift .[dot] is a quick way to temporarily show hidden files...

empty the trash?

I'd doubt hidden files are likely to take up 100GB of stuff btw, all the hidden .files on a mac are usually tiny.

Hidden files might well be tiny but the local backup set (which is also hidden) can be very large. Though I wouldn't expect them to be that large!

An alternative to du is ls

ls -laR | grep -E '^[^d]' > ~/filesizes.txt

The flags to ls are 'l' long format, 'a' everything, i.e. include hidden files, 'R' recursive, i.e. all subdirectories.

The grep command is taking that and checking for the directory flag, the -E flag says to exclude those it finds.

You are then left with just the information about the files which is written to the file.

There's no sorting done with this one but you can sort by each folder using ls -laRS

If you know that the file is above a certain size then you can use --threshold=5M for 5Mb for example

jimdubleyou - Member
I use Grand Perspective for locating massive files.

Second this, it's great: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net

If you download the free version from SourceForge, you might need to ctrl+click>open before OS X will let you run it the first time.

Another idea
Click the Apple icon on the menu bar, click About This Mac, and click the Storage heading

[img] [/img]

That will show disk usage split into categories which might be helpful

"They just work"

Another idea
Click the Apple icon on the menu bar, click About This Mac, and click the Storage heading

That will show disk usage split into categories which might be helpful

Is that a different thing to what I've shown in my original post? Or maybe the picture didn't work?

Erm, yes shermer75. I've just revisited this thread and seen your picture for the first time.

So clearly I've spent my time posting bollocks. Sorry.

Meanwhile, anything useful here?

http://osxdaily.com/2015/01/15/other-storage-space-mac-os-x/

Omni disk sweeper is very good

Does she backup a high capacity iphone / ipad to the mac, if so those files not surprisingly large (eg a 64gb phone uses nearly 64gb-ish to backup). Does she use the mail app and have a lot of old emails with large attachments ?

As earlier poster says a rouge log file / app could be responsible but it looks a bit odd.

Can you see the size of all folders? I know sometimes macs don't show you and you need to go in a do view options, Calculate all sizes. That'll let you see where where the largest files are and it'll show you folder sizes that aren't listed.

Looking at the how the disk is divided I doubt things have been getting saved in the standard places.