Disk usage - missing GB

[Mark59]

I have a strange discrepancy between the disk usage reported by "df -h" from a shell and the usage reported by various gui tools (JDiskReport & Disk Inventory X). From df I see this:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 266Gi 112Gi 153Gi 43% /
devfs 107Ki 107Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
fdesc 1.0Ki 1.0Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home
/dev/disk0s3 32Gi 27Gi 5.0Gi 85% /Volumes/Untitled

Note how it indicates that I've used up 112GB. Similarly "du -hsx /" reports 112GB. That all seems rather high. What on earth are we doing with the disk space (OK so there are a couple VM disks, but even so it seems like a lot)?

So I ran JdiskReport and it indicates that I've used up about 58GB (same for Disk Inventory).

Why the difference? Who is right? If we really have chewed up 112GB how do I find out where its all gone?

Thanks,

Mark

[mmkerc]

I do not have the UNIX knowledge to tell you why this is true, just the experince, but the correct answer is the gui one (you have used 58 GB).

[Mark59]

OK I think it has to do with privs. Running JDiskReport from a normal account means that it cannot dig down into the home directories of other users. Once I started to investigate each of the accounts, I found the Library area of my work account was chewing up 40GB+. Not yet looked in detail but I suspect its the cache used by Entourage. Thus I think "df" is correct and the other tools are wrong - I guess you would need to run as root.

Sorry for the noise,

Mark

[mrcqm]

Originally Posted by Mark59

OK I think it has to do with privs. Running JDiskReport from a normal account means that it cannot dig down into the home directories of other users. Once I started to investigate each of the accounts, I found the Library area of my work account was chewing up 40GB+. Not yet looked in detail but I suspect its the cache used by Entourage. Thus I think "df" is correct and the other tools are wrong - I guess you would need to run as root.

Sorry for the noise,

Mark

Rereading the original post, I noticed you didn't mention using the default gui tool -- Finder. Did you try that? It should be 100% accurate. A simple way: Right click on the drive > get info.

I wouldn't suggest running your UI as root unless absolutely necessary but you seem comfortable with UNIX tools so I'm sure you already know that. I leave my gui in administrator mode which gives me access to pretty much everything I need while shielding me from the dangerous stuff. If something requires root access, I generally prefer to go the sudo route in Terminal. Logging in as the root user is just a last resort for me.

Terminal and Finder both give me precisely the same number (400 GB free in both cases).