Disk Inventory X

flyfish_ar · Guest

Can anyone tell me what/where the files described as "space occupied by other files and folders" actually reside. This looks like lost disk space to me and I'd like to be able to recover it. Any help appreciated.

BTW - I really appreciate the work that went into developing this program. I have found it to be very helpful.

Tjark Derlien

"other space" is the space occupied by all files which are currently *not* shown - so all files residing outside of the shown folder.
To identify them in Disk Inventory X you may load the whole volume and look what consumes so much disk space.

- Tjark

Guest

Thanks for the reply. The "other space" I have seen IS as a result of looking at the entire volume. So, what I see is occupied space in all the Inventory colors, free space in grey and "space occupied by other files and folders", also in grey. And occupied + free + other = volume capacity. Is this "other" space being used by the OS in some way or is it somply unaccounted for? Thanks[/u]

Tjark Derlien

Ah, yes. In this case "Other space" represents the sum of sizes of the directories for which the user hasn't the necessary rights for.

Please read this post for details.

You see, the results of Disk Inventory X are not exact if it is unable to read all directories. And this is often the case if it is examining the boot drive without the necessary rights Sad

- Tjark

iScootDIX

Hi. I've come upon Disk Inventory X via an Apple technician (I work with an Apple-Authorized Service Provider)... he recommended this application because I'm at a lost to find some 'missing' disk space.

Here's some background info: a while back I ran Disk Utility's Erase Free Disk Space feature. I guess I was too impatient because to me it looked like it crashed (but it didn't, as I would find out later) so I force quit it. The result was that I went from about 20GB+ to 0GB free! I was able to clear up a bit of junk that I didn't need, so now I've got about 3GB free. Further: my drive is a 30GB drive with about 7.5GB used and 3GB free... see the weirdness? I should have over 20GB free, not 3GB!

I've posted to the Apple Discussion forums and www.macfixit.com, but so far no one's been able to solve my issue. If this wasn't weird enough, I'm also having this weird 'missing' disk space issue on another computer that hasn't had the Erase Free Space done on it.

Long story short, the Apple tech recommended that I try this application. At first, nothing out of the ordinary, until I noticed the 'View Other Space' option. I went into the preferences and enabled it... and bam! There was a huge chunk of space (about 19.1GB as reported by DIX) that said "space occupied by other files and folders."

My next question: how can I remove this big chunk to regain this disk space? Is it possible within this application? If not, any suggestions? Thank you in advance!!

--
Scott

Tjark Derlien

Sounds a bit like a file system problem? Have you tried any of the disk checking tools (Apple's Disk Utility or Alsoft's DiskWarrior)?

iScootDIX

Tjark Derlien

Sorry, but I think DIX won't help here. The "Other Space" is just a calculated size. I relies on the reported information from the operating system.
A solution might be to clone the drive to a second hard drive or partition and then format and reinstall Mac OS on the original drive using the Migration Assistant, so that all documents, programs and settings are copied back to the original drive.

Or just clone 2 times: first from your corrupted drive to a 2nd one. Then format the original drive and clone the os back (as Carbon Copy Cloner just copy files it might work).

iScootDIX

That's probably what I'll end up doing. I'll exhaust the Mac forums, first. Smile

If I find a solution, I'll post back here, but otherwise reformatting the drive sounds like the only solution.

--Scott