Dear Aunt TUAW,
I had been reading your post on TUAW since i start using my mac, your “Dear Aunt TUAW” helps alot cause i still new to this OSX. Now i had a minor problem and hope you can help me sort it out.
I had no idea the available disk space shows when i hit “space bar” (quick look window) is different from the “Get info” window.
How can i retrieve those missing disc space?
Your loving nephew,
Mua
Dear Mua,
You’re working on a laptop, aren’t you? Auntie is guessing that because Time Machine works slightly differently under Lion with portable systems.
Before Auntie gets to the answer, she wants to remind all her nieces and nephews of a few key tricks for checking space under Lion.
- In any Finder window, Command-/ will toggle hiding and showing the file size status bar, including free space availability.
- Right-Click > Get Info on any Finder item opens an Info window complete with file size information.
- Apple > About This Mac > More Info > Storage > shows Disk Usage bars, similar to the ones you’ve seen in iTunes for years.
Auntie’s main drive looks something like this.
And yours looks something like this.
The big difference? Is the purple Backups portion, between the green Apps and the yellow Other. (Don’t confuse the Backups purple with the Movies purple. Apple, you couldn’t have gone with, say, red? The items are in order, so Movies only appear between blue and orange.)
On mobile systems, Time Machine automatically creates local backups, saving hourly snapshots of newly changed files. The free space you see in About This Mac on a laptop reflects those backups, but the Finder’s Get Info free space does not.
That’s because the local snapshot material is ephemeral. Time Machine automatically removes these as needed to make space for your applications to use. What’s more, Time Machine periodically condenses these backups, to minimize disk use.
Local backups mean your computer is always watching your back, making sure your data is being looked after without having to hook up an external drive. It’s a great feature and one that hasn’t been as hyped in Lion write-ups as it deserves to be.
Hope this helps. Hugs,
Auntie T.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me find my disk space originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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