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I have a tiny hard drive - 128 GB. I am not that technical. I see that other files under storage is taking up say 40 GB of space. My boyfriend got me a WD NAS hard drive and I was able to move my photos from iPhoto, and iTunes, there to free up some space.

I accidentally deleted iPhoto so in order to install it.

My boyfriend showed me a script that showed the size of some big directories.

.3G /Applications/iMovie 9.0.9/iMovie 9.0.9.app/Contents/Resources

1.3G /Applications/iMovie 9.0.9/iMovie 9.0.9.app/Contents

1.3G /Applications/iMovie 9.0.9/iMovie 9.0.9.app

1.3G /Applications/iMovie 9.0.9

2.0G /Applications/iMovie.app/Contents

2.0G /Applications/iMovie.app

5.3G /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/SharedSupport

5.3G /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents

5.3G /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app

1.1G /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources

1.3G /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents

1.3G /Applications/iPhoto.app

1.0G /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office

1.2G /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011

Can i delete the iMovie directory and maybe download it at a later time?

Is there a better way to figure out where all the space is being taken up?

Like lets say I had an 18 GB zip file saved on my desktop. Theoretically that would be under the other space category but OS X isn't helping make me aware of that file. How do I find big files like that? Mind you i don't have a 18 GB zip file sitting around but I am trying to find if I have any big files sitting around to delete.

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Laura
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3 Answers3

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I highly recommend using: http://daisydiskapp.com

.. Once downloaded and installed they have a "Test Drive" option you click that lets you use it for free. Please note that to see all files on your HD that all users own, you will want to use the "Scan as Administrator" option, which will prompt you to enter your password.

There is also:

sean2078
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I use Grand Perspective for checking what is hogging disk space. Its a good visual tool - try it out - http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

Vipul Swarup
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du

You can use the commandline to help you out with this. I prefer a one-liner such as this one:

sudo du -h /Users 2>/dev/null | grep '^\s*[0-9]\+G'

This might be intimidating in the beginning, but it is fairly simple. You can find an explanation on what each part does here: explainshell.com. But in short, it uses a user with admin rights to check the size of each file in /Users, only the files starting that are more than 1GB are reported back to the user.

Output looks like this:

 12G    /Users/SisterMorphine
 11G    /Users/CousinCocaine/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/36f7b86ae0c012ea81226714036c4453ad86e67a
 11G    /Users/CousinCocaine/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
 11G    /Users/CousinCocaine/Library/Application Support/MobileSync
 19G    /Users/CousinCocaine/Library/Application Support
 29G    /Users/CousinCocaine/Library
 45G    /Users/CousinCocaine
 11G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Library
 12G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Pictures/PabloPicasso 2015.photoslibrary/Masters/2015/05/16/20150516-111947
 21G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Pictures/PabloPicasso 2015.photoslibrary/Masters/2015/05/16
 24G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Pictures/PabloPicasso 2015.photoslibrary/Masters/2015/05
 36G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Pictures/PabloPicasso 2015.photoslibrary/Masters/2015
 36G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Pictures/PabloPicasso 2015.photoslibrary/Masters
 37G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Pictures/PabloPicasso 2015.photoslibrary
 37G    /Users/PabloPicasso/Pictures
 53G    /Users/PabloPicasso
110G    /Users
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CousinCocaine
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