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I downloaded a file that is more than 20GB, but after deleting the file the space is still taken, and it's not showing in the finder. I'm using a macbook pro with retina display 121GB with bootcamp and OS X Mavericks.

markhunte
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Bill
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  • stupid question, did you empty your Trash ? – Ruskes Feb 22 '14 at 12:10
  • Another stupid question. How do you know it is still taking up the space – markhunte Feb 22 '14 at 12:20
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    @Bill, it may sound like a stupid question hence the preface to not to insult your intelligence. Your question lacks some detailed information, all you say is you had a 20GB file that was deleted on a 121GB HD. My question is a valid one. HOW do you know it is this file that is still taking up space after deletion and which is not showing in the finder. What evidence do you have of this, how do you know it is not some other piece of data. How did you delete it, was it a hidden file and so on.. – markhunte Feb 23 '14 at 15:35
  • @markhunte, Sorry about insulting you, it is my fault to not to put in more detailed info. How do I know, I split the system in to Bootcamp and Macintosh before I get the file there was still about 25 GB of space left out of the 52.47 GB of space on my Macintosh drive. It is not a hidden file. After I deleted it, I try to get a game on mac app store: Metro: Last Light, which requires about 10 GB of storage, than it won't download because of the storage. I got the file with UTorrent. I checked my storage it it says the same thing as before I deleted the file.Can you help me? Thanks alot. – Bill Feb 24 '14 at 01:16
  • possible duplicate of How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space? – mmmmmm Nov 19 '14 at 23:01

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If you have enabled Time Machine, the disk space could be taken up by local snapshots. When local snapshots are enabled, Time Machine saves snapshots to /.MobileBackups/ when there is more than 10% free disk space. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878. Local snapshots are not counted as used disk space in Finder, but they are shown under backups in the About This Mac window. The snapshots are deleted automatically if disk space is low enough, but since 10.9 the newest snapshot is kept even if there is less than 10% free disk space.

To see what files take up disk space, you can use OmniDiskSweeper:

To include folders like /.MobileBackups/, open OmniDiskSweeper as root by running sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper.

You can also just use Finder. Run sudo defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true;sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder, open the root folder in list view, and enable calculating all sizes:

Lri
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