You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Home folder sizeis wrong, abnormal high

Hello,

On the Mac mini of my wife, the home folder is mentionned to be 4Tb big. That is obviously wrong, as the disk size is 500Gb and is filled up to 300Gb. The sum of the sizes of the folders in the home folder does not exceed 300Gb. So, only the home folder size is wrong. And backup cannot take place, because the backup disc is not 4Tb large. Is there any way to have the system recalculates the real size of the folders?

Many thanks in advance for your kind help,

Mac mini, macOS 10.13

Posted on May 10, 2019 2:56 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 14, 2019 5:29 PM

I can only surmise there is corruption, if not on the drive's directory, then more likely to the OS itself... do you have a good recent backup?


A clone would be ideal, as you could boot from it, I think we need to reinstall the OS, orv maybe even Erase the drive then reinstall.


Similar questions

13 replies

May 12, 2019 11:33 AM in response to Eric Root

Hallo BDAqua, many thanks for your idea. Indeed, obviously I should have tried that before posting the question to the forum. So, in the meantime I did, but it has not cured the problem.

Any other idea?


Hallo Eric Root, also many thanks for your suggestion. I did as you said, and unfortunately it has not cured the problem.

Now the strange behavior is that:

The size of the disk is mentioned as 500Gb, and that is correct;

The size of the Users folder is mentioned as 4,67Gb, that's almost 10 times the size of the disk!

The size of the Home folder is also mentioned as 4,67 Gb, like the Users folder, although the contained folders and files barely uses 288Gb. In fact the Disc repair utility ends the repair with giving the right figures: Capacity: 466Gb, Used: 288Gb, Free: 213Gb.

My concern is that backup program asks for a backup drive of at least 4,67Tb!


Many thanks in advance for your suggestions!

May 13, 2019 2:50 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hello everybody, thanks for your help. Unfortunately, The issue remains.

I used Option+Command+i for the Home folder as recommended by Viking OSX, but the figures are the same as when I use Command+I: 4,68Tb.


I also downloaded OmniDiskSweeper and examioned the size calculations from OmniDiskSweeper: Users: 280Gb and Home: 280Gb. These are the right figures.


But still, the info window in the Finder shows: Disc 499Gb, Users 4,68Tb, Home 4,68Tb. (In other words, the Users folder and the Home folder are almost ten times as big as the disk...)


If somebody got an idea...

Home folder sizeis wrong, abnormal high

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.