Space taken up on back-up drives less than on Mac HD
I am rather flummoxed by the following:
In round figures, 'Get Info' tells me that on my 500GB SSD, 300GB are taken up, leaving 200GB free,
Now, when I do a full back-up with either, Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, I see that only 100GB are taken up. What happened to the missing 200GB?
Both back-up versions allow me to boot from them, so, no problem there, and as far as I can ascertain, nothing appears to be missing on the back-up drives. But something cannot be right here, surely?
Any thoughts on this would obviously be much appreciated. I have never come across this before, nor have the people I have asked.
Comments
Mind boggling... have you tried any of the disk allocation utils, such as grand perspective and the like?
Other stabs in the dark would be the trash can, but you 'd have done this already, or some cache file that is out of whack in size and doesn't get copied over, but both ccc and superduper copy everything over, so that should be out of the question too..
Thanks for replying so quickly, SHSF.
I have not used any of the disk allocation utils you mentioned, but I have used "FreeDiskSpace" from the App Store. Ideally, I would like to post the screengrabs, but I keep getting,"The file type being uploaded is not allowed." when I try to. Another puzzle
Any idea where I could be going wrong?
In essence, FreeDiskSpace confirms the figures/numbers I mentioned in my original post. I will have to have a good look at the FDS result for my 'Mac HD' and see if I can find those 200GB.
"About This Mac" gives me the following figures, again, I can't post the grab:
Mac HD first, then back-up DH (SuperDuper)
Audio 1.12 GB | 1.11 GB
Movies 7.43 GB | 38.12 GB
Photos 11.93 GB | 10.38 GB
Apps 17.43 GB | 840.3 MB
Backups Zero MB | Zero MB
Other 257.93 GB | 41.36 GB
The big difference in size is for "Other", approx. 200GB, those 200GB.
Curiously, there is also a notable difference for "Apps".
Oh, and my Trash Can is empty.
Something is certainly out of whack, Superduper (and ccc for that matter) are supposed to clone the drive, and make an exact copy, but here besides the discrepancy in the other category there's also a huge discrepancy between movies and apps.
My suggestion would be: Go to both hd drives, internal (ssd) and external, or the image file if it's an image file, go to list view in both, go to show view options (cmd j), and have it calculate all file sizes, and set as default. After you give it some time, then maybe check folders and subfolders for the differences in sizes.
I 've once had, if I remember correctly, a parallels cache file that was taking up huge amounts of space, something like 40 gigs or something, so it could be something like that. But most probably something is not selected to be carried over in the superduper back up? I 've used both ccc and superduper, for, I don't know, both upwards of 200 times, it must be by now, and everything always carried over. Maybe some folder isn't selected to be copied for some reason? Your downloads, or documents, maybe the latter with a parallels vm there?
All the best buddy.
Thanks for all that encouraging info
I will be away from my machine for a few days, but will then do as you suggested and report back after that.
Any hint on why I am unable to post images?
Thanks again. Much appreciated.
[edit]: I don't quite follow you on this, "maybe the latter with a parallels vm there?"
For example you might have in your documents folder, where usually parallels puts its virtual machine there, and that can take up a lot of space, this windows virtual machine installation. For some reason or other superduper or ccc might not copy the documents folder that includes the parallels virtual machine installation.
As for the file upload, grab saves in tiff, and the forums accept only png and jpeg, so you can save it and then open it via preview and export it as jpeg. There's a faster way to do this, which escapes me at the moment.
This may be the beginning to the start of solving the puzzle:
• The black area shows up on GrandPerspective - an excellent little app I had not come across before - as "175 GB free space"
• and the grey area, interestingly, reads as "187 GB Miscellaneous used space".
But, alas, I cannot get any more information than that, unlike when I click on the coloured areas.
I have been doing some more file comparisons between the Mac HD and the back-up drive HD, and so far everything 'appears' to be backed up.
Bottom line, I am still stumped
Installer, do this in the terminal:
In order for sudo to work you need to have a password set for your account, and be an admin, which you are:
sudo -> do as super user, i.e., allow access to administrative stuff
du -> disk usage
-c -> Display a grand total.
-x -> File system mount points are not traversed. (Just stay on this disk, ignore other disks.)
-h -> "Human-readable" output. GB rather than bytes.
-d 1 -> Traverse to this depth (1 level down, in this case).
/ -> start at the top level, the root directory. That needs admin access, hence "sudo".
See here too:
http://ask.metafilter.com/251994/Differing-Used-HD-Space-Reports-in-OS-X
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2368954?tstart=0
Other than grand perspective, try WhatSize, and Disk Inventory X, if you are averse with the terminal.
----------------
Edit: Maybe it's a better idea to start thus:
Also it will be a good idea to show your hidden OS X files, now, so:
terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
Kill the finder (force quit it via the upper left x) via activity monitor, it will relaunch itself.
(revert to hidden when you want via:
All the best. You 'll get to the bottom of this soon.
The following app is free:
http://diskwave.barthe.ph
If you click on the drive icon, it will take some time measuring the drive and list the folders by size showing you where on the drive the space is being used.
SHSF
Quick reply/question: not being au fait with The Terminal, do I just open it, copy and paste what you have written, and then hit 'Enter'?
Sorry, gotta rush, but many thanks for your continued "involvement"
Thanks for your pointer, Marvin.
Had a quick go with DiskWave - alas, pushed for time at present - but from what I saw the 'grey area' as seen in my earlier post did not show up: there was also nothing that added up to 187GB
Will report back later. Thanks again.
SHSF
Quick reply/question: not being au fait with The Terminal, do I just open it, copy and paste what you have written, and then hit 'Enter'?
Sorry, gotta rush, but many thanks for your continued "involvement"
Yeap, just that. Maybe try the show all files first, because the issue might be with some hidden file.
Great little piece of software btw, Marvin.
SHSF
Interim tip --> Funter: http://nektony.com/products/funter
Seems to be working o.k. Gotta go. Later. Thanks.
[edit]: I found two hidden files.
.localized = size zero bytes
.DS_Store = size 24,580 bytes
Dig on brother, have the os calculate all sizes.
If you go into preferences, there's a checkbox to show invisible files. Be careful not to delete invisible files at random as they are used by the OS.
I am digging. I am digging. The weekend is here
Thanks for additional tip, Marvin.
S
R T E D --> The black space now reads: 358 GB Free space Yippee !
Gentlemen, by some freak chance I decided to run Disk Utility and was informed that a repair was needed.
While the repair was running, the following came up:
Volume bitmap needs minor repairs for orphaned blocks
&
Invalid volume free block count (It should be 93994754 instead of 44820062)
And that was/is that then.
My heartfelt thanks to both of you for all the help given. Yosemite, here I come
Hahaha, for sure. Very glad it's all good and well, and sorted.
Orphaned blocks reparented.
(we should have thought of that maybe earlier on, but all's well that ends well, and a great util suggestion from Marvin along the way)
Check out Black Mode and Reduce Transparency from accessibility options, which is how I ride my Yosemite.
Shoot any q's you might have.