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When I checked my storage for my Mac it says that I have over 200 GB in movies. First, I do not have that many movies. Second, my Mac can only hold 128 GB. How can I fix this?

Update: I just deleted a couple of videos and the storage space changed accordingly. It used to be 214.06 GB and now it is 201 GB.

Mac Hard disk usage

Screenshot of DiasyDisk contradicting what it says in the previous screenshot. Ignore exact numbers I deleted quite a few things last night (completely irrelevant to the movies).

enter image description here

Name
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  • Use something like DaisyDisk to determine what is using the storage. Also, if it says you are using 200GB in movies, then your drive is larger than 128GB. Are you sure it's not saying 200MB? – tubedogg May 28 '15 at 04:44
  • @tubedogg I've already use programs like that. But it is not a matter of storage. My mac says that my capacity is 128 GB, it also says on the box. But it clearly says in my storage that I have over 200gb's in movies. However, it says that I have 40.73 gb's of space available. So I'm only using around 80 gb's. – Name May 28 '15 at 04:50
  • If you removed files totaling ~14GB, and the amount of storage listed as used decreased by the same amount, then the files are clearly there and being stored somewhere. If you've already used a program like DaisyDisk, then remove whatever the offending files are and your storage usage should decrease. In any event, I wouldn't worry too much about what that usage meter shows. Your system will notify you if you are actually running low on storage on your boot drive. – tubedogg May 28 '15 at 04:56
  • @tubedogg I'm not worried. I know I have a lot of space on my mac. The thing is that the files are not there. I've looked for these movies and cannot find them. Also it wouldn't make sense for those movies to be there, because that means those movies actually exist and alone they take up more space than I am allowed. I just want to fix this glitch. – Name May 28 '15 at 05:03
  • What does DaisyDisk show? – tubedogg May 28 '15 at 05:03
  • It says that I'm using 80GB out of 120GB. And I've deleted all the movies it showed me. Which proves that this is some kind of glitch/error. – Name May 28 '15 at 05:04
  • Can you add screenshots showing the different windows/graphics with the conflicting space information? – nohillside May 28 '15 at 06:24
  • @patrix Not sure what you mean. Do you mean images saying how much space is available on my mac? – Name May 28 '15 at 06:28
  • You are getting the information about the 200 GB from somewhere (an application or something). A screenshot of this would help to understand what you are looking at. – nohillside May 28 '15 at 07:02
  • i added two sceenshots. Hopefully they help. – Name May 28 '15 at 16:18

3 Answers3

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Regardless of third party applications, if the system drive information is showing file system inconsistencies, there are a few possibilities. Try each of the following in order until the problem is fixed.

1) Empty the Trash and reboot your machine in Safe Mode. Once you login, reboot normally.

2) Boot into macOS Recovery (command+R at the chime). Repair your normal startup volume using Disk Utility. While you can do this "in live mode" during normal operation, it's not as reliable as checking the volume from your recovery partition in recovery mode.

3) Reindex your drive.

  • Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences > Spotlight > The Privacy tab.
  • Click the Add (+) button and select your boot volume from the sidebar (sometimes under devices)
  • Wait 10 seconds. Select the same item and click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
  • Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.

4) If (3) doesn't work, then forcibly reindex your drive from the terminal using the following command (admin privileges required):

sudo mdutil -E /
njboot
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It's possible that there are some hard links pointing to video files which is confusing the storage calculator. Time Machine will do this; but, it should not occur on your main partition. So, the exact cause is a mystery.

For example, for a 3GB file linked to two locations, the space might calculate as 6GB (3GB plus 3GB), even though only 3GB is used.

There is this question at Super User which might help you isolate the files as well.

Community
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Kent
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If you have Final Cut then check out this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiEGGjYPB_I

It has to do with files rendering and back-ups being made every so often...this video saved me

Hope it helps!

Chris Greene
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