Hello - My hard drive was getting full, so I moved files to an external drive. I moved them, deleted them, and deleted them from the trash, but I am not recovering the space. I ran the disk utility. I tried Onyx. Nothing is working. Any ideas? Thanks
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 21.5″, macOS 14.4
The "deleted" items may still reside in hidden APFS backup snapshots. The backup AFPS snapshots will automatically be deleted once the backups have transferred to external media, although one backup snapshot may remain...in that case, a new backup snapshot would be created & the older larger snapshot would be deleted. Different backup apps may have configuration options for how many snapshots remain on the internal drive & for how long. These APFS snapshot will not appear on any scan of macOS except through Disk Utility (or the command line utility version of Time Machine):
The "deleted" items may still reside in hidden APFS backup snapshots. The backup AFPS snapshots will automatically be deleted once the backups have transferred to external media, although one backup snapshot may remain...in that case, a new backup snapshot would be created & the older larger snapshot would be deleted. Different backup apps may have configuration options for how many snapshots remain on the internal drive & for how long. These APFS snapshot will not appear on any scan of macOS except through Disk Utility (or the command line utility version of Time Machine):
What are your large libraries, i.e. for most they are:
For most users those are the ones that should be moved to an External Hard Disk. Then deleted from the internal drive and finally empty the Trash.
If that is not doing it for you then you have other problems and I'd suggest the following:
It will help us get a good idea of what is causing your problem if you provide a report of your system, that way we do not have to play 20 questions with you. The report we are requesting does NOT provide any personal information and is extremely safe to use. Please navigate to www.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.
When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again.
For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community It is helpful to us if you download the report to your Desktop.
This Terminal command should point out where the biggest files/folders are...
Thanks to Bob Harris file sizes, Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal:...
sudo du -hx | sort -h
Open Terminal & paste this command in & prefs enter, it’ll ask for an admin password & not echo what you type, wait for it to finish.
sudo will prompt for admin password but not reflect what you type, so hit enter after carefully tying the PW. :)
See this screenshot and see if it might apply to your situation:
How much fre space do you have?
25GB... I moved 615GB to an external hard drive. My computer has 1TB.
After deleting files on my iMac, my storage did not decrease
