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Storage Space on Mac

Hello. I recently deleted over 38GB of photos from my computer (over 6,000 photos) to free up storage on my macOS Sierra. I emptied my trash cans and I've restarted many times. I only got 3GB of storage back. This has happened to me multiple times where I will delete so many GB and my Mac is not recognizing this and continues to give me the Start Up Disk is Full message. This is so frustrating. Please help.

Posted on Sep 11, 2019 10:49 AM

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Posted on Sep 11, 2019 5:08 PM

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?


Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

4 replies

Sep 11, 2019 10:53 AM in response to ape923

The Storage tab is known to report incorrectly. Also check by choosing your Mac HD and "Get Info" (command-i). It may be different. Try rebuilding Spotlight index.

How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support


Some of the space may also be from Time Machine Snapshots.

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support


Download Omni DiskSweeper:

https://www.omnigroup.com/more

DiskSweeper can give you a more accurate read of disk space than Finder or Storage Tab of About this Mac. It can also show you the precise size and location of all your files. It will inventory your disk starting from the files that take up the most space. If you want you can even delete files from OmniDisk Sweeper. But be careful some of the items may be important to your system.



Sep 11, 2019 4:47 PM in response to macjack

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my question! It still did not work, however.


Any other suggestions? I remember the last few times this happened I followed directions I found online by pushing just a couple buttons on my keyboard, (example: control and command and maybe a number) restarted and I all my free space then showed up. It was in a Questions/Answer thread that I can't find anymore online. So I know it's possible, I just can't remember how I did it.

Storage Space on Mac

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