Why mac reading the space/ folder size incorrectly

I have a folder with about 30 jpegs about 3 mb each.
1 movie 45 mb.
Yet Mac says on command i, and also, in finder window 295mb.
thanks.

You may have some large hidden files/folders in that folder. Look at the output from the terminal commands:

cd path/to/your/folder
ls -al
du -hd1

The ls command will tell you the sizes of all the files in the folder, invisible or not, but will vastly underreport the sizes of any subfolders. The du command will tell you the sizes of any subfolders, invisible or not, along with a grand total for the whole folder.

thanks Gan, not clear what to put in Terminal.

You can safely experiment by copying the commands listed in green, pasting that in your terminal window and hitting Return. You'll see then that you need to substitute the actual path to the folder of interest for the portion reading path/to/your/folder to get the goods on it, but that the ls -al command will return some information regardless. The final line of that information will list the du -hd1 command, and another hit on the Return key will yield that portion of the info.

thanks, I tried did not work.
There folder is 5 deep in. is I know how to select a file name, how do I select a folder name so as not to screw up the name?

Originally Posted By: kevs

thanks, I tried did not work.
There folder is 5 deep in. is I know how to select a file name, how do I select a folder name so as not to screw up the name?

Type in the first command, leave a space after it, i.e. cd[space], and drag the folder into the Terminal window; Terminal will fill in the path on its own (without moving the folder). Hit return, type 2nd command as is, hit return, type 3rd command as is, hit return, post results.

Edit: You'll get something along these lines:

Code:

Last login: Sun Dec 26 12:06:59 on ttys000
Artie-s-Computer-4:~ artie$ cd /Volumes/HD2/3rd\ Party\ Stuff 
Artie-s-Computer-4:3rd Party Stuff artie$ ls -al
total 88
-rw-r--r--@  1 artie  admin  16384 Dec 15 19:42  $ Status.xls
drwxr-xr-x@ 12 artie  admin    408 Dec 12 02:14 .
drwxrwxr-x  27 root   admin    986 Dec 22 18:14 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 artie  admin  15364 Dec 17 03:55 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x  15 artie  admin    510 Dec 17 03:55 :Apps
drwxr-xr-x  50 artie  admin   1700 Dec 17 03:55 Apps
drwxr-xr-x  11 artie  admin    374 Jul 16 17:06 Non-3rd Party
drwxr-xr-x  11 artie  admin    374 Nov 25 19:40 Others
-rw-r--r--@  1 artie  artie    414 Jul 25 01:07 SL No-gos.rtf
drwxr-xr-x   8 artie  admin    272 Nov 25 01:50 Safari Extensions
drwxr-xr-x   5 artie  admin    170 Oct 28  2008 SheepShaver
drwxr-xr-x   9 artie  admin    306 Apr  2  2010 ~Apps
Artie-s-Computer-4:3rd Party Stuff artie$ du -hd1
 61M	./:Apps
307M	./Apps
 71M	./Non-3rd Party
 50M	./Others
540K	./Safari Extensions
2.1M	./SheepShaver
3.5M	./~Apps
495M	.
Artie-s-Computer-4:3rd Party Stuff artie$

solved, forgot I had ishow invisible app.
Dont know why a Bridge cache file would be 150mb, as large as all images in the folder.