ENORMOUS DIFFERENCE IN DISK CAPACITY

[simon says]

Hi all, can you help please? HDD connected to iMac m3
18 TB HDD G-drive pro Thunderbolt states conflicting storage: 18 folders including hidden = 5.33 tb but iMac is stating I'm using 15tb. I've unplugged and re-connected the drive but to no avail.
Any ideas?
Thank you, Simon

 

[MacsBug]

Hi Simon,

My guess is that the get info window is correct. I am not sure what app you are using that shows only 19 items with 5.33 TB. My best guess is that its not reading what is in nested folders.

in the finder you can open the drive in list mode, then hit Command J. Check calculate all sizes and see what is in each folder. By guess is that it will add up to the 15.27TB.

Also, you can use an app like GrandPerspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net) toi see what is in the drive and if there are any large files that may be taking up space.

 

[simon says]

Thank you so much for the reply, much appreciated.
The 5.33 tb total was created by simply selecting the folders and letting the OS “do the math”, hopefully that’s viewable in the image.
I’ll certainly try your suggestions and was also thinking of moving the folders to a freshly formatted drive and see what total it came up with. Moving to duplicate the files rather than cloning the drive as I would normally.
Really hoping the total is nearer 5 than 15tb! I’ll let you know tomorrow. Thanks again, Simon.

 

[TonyAguila]

Thank you so much for the reply, much appreciated.
The 5.33 tb total was created by simply selecting the folders and letting the OS “do the math”, hopefully that’s viewable in the image.
I’ll certainly try your suggestions and was also thinking of moving the folders to a freshly formatted drive and see what total it came up with. Moving to duplicate the files rather than cloning the drive as I would normally.
Really hoping the total is nearer 5 than 15tb! I’ll let you know tomorrow. Thanks again, Simon.

Try using Disk Utility first. Another conflict could be from having multiple partitions. Does your HD have two or more? With Disk Utility and APFS, I’ve learned to stay with a single partition and just adding volumes to create “separate” drives, even with my 12- and 18-TB hard drives.

 

[simon says]

Try using Disk Utility first. Another conflict could be from having multiple partitions. Does your HD have two or more? With Disk Utility and APFS, I’ve learned to stay with a single partition and just adding volumes to create “separate” drives, even with my 12- and 18-TB hard drives.

Hi. Just the one partition. Disk utility took ages to find my hard drives - I left it to do its thing last night in case indexing was required and it’s fine this morning.

 

[TonyAguila]

Hi. Just the one partition. Disk utility took ages to find my hard drives - I left it to do its thing last night in case indexing was required and it’s fine this morning.

If it takes time to display all of the attached drives/partitions in Disk Utility, there must be slow communication between your iMac and the external drive(s). I have two external enclosures, four drives in each, a mix of hard drives and SSDs. They are connected via Thunderbolt 4, and run 24/7. In addition, there are two NVMe 4TB SSDs connected directly to the back of the Mac Studio. At any time, it takes about 10 seconds for Disk Utility to connect and display all of the volumes. Therefore, I suspect that the connection to your external drives must be slow. I haven’t had any experience with the G-Drive Pro 2. Does it connect with Thunderbolt?

This is what Disk Utility displays for me, and what you see is about half of all there is. I have to scroll down to see the bottom of the list. All drives are formatted APFS.

 

[simon says]

Thank you.
The slow Disk Utility is a new issue, normally my drives open almost instantly in there. Yes, they are Thunderbolt 4 connections.
Currently backing up the troublesome 18 tb hdd to a drive using Carnon Copy Cloner which has discovered 5.33tb of data (not 15tb that showed the disk as nearly full). It’s got another hour to go so I’ll see what size that drive is afterwards. I’m planning to then check Lightroom can read those files and all being well format the initial troublesome drive to APFS and send the files back using Carbon Copy Cloner again. Fingers crossed. I’ll keep you updated.

 

[simon says]

Carbon copy Cloner seems to have understandably copied the invisible files to inflate the second drive to 15tb. Now trying to move all the files (including the 8gb of those hidden and now shown by command shift full stop) to a freshly formatted drive. It’s an 8 hour wait for that to complete. Chat soon!

 

[simon says]

Update: Files moved to new drive are being read by Lightroom successfully; they are totalling roughly 5tb not the 15tb.
Original drive has been formatted and using Carbon Copy Cloner I’m moving them back to the original G-Drive Pro. I’ve no reason to believe they will “Inflate” but will throughly test the integrity of images by editing, saving and exporting to check all is good.
I’ll keep the carbon copy of the 15tb data on a separate drive for some time before I dare lose it.

I still don’t know what went wrong and where the inflated files are from. Grandperspectiv hasn’t helped me find any large files but I’ll look again at the inflated copy of the original drive with it. It did however make me realise that I have some enormous tiff files on my hdd that need sorting so it was a good buy, thank you.

Final update soon.