My music library is taking up double storage space (Documents + iTunes)

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Level 1

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My music library is taking up double storage space (Documents + iTunes)

I haven't been able to find a clear answer to this online, though I've seen other people talking about it. I was trying to clear space on the HD of my late-2013 Macbook Pro Retina, and I noticed that my Documents folder was quite a bit bigger than it should be. Namely, I've revealed any hidden files/folders (there aren't any), then added together the total size of my remaining documents and folders, and my total Documents size should be about half a gig, if that.

Instead, it's almost 5 GB, and the main difference in size is just about exactly the size of my iTunes library. Not only that, but when I go to Storage -> Manage for my HD, the two largest files in my Documents folder are both songs (.wav files). Here's the real kicker: If I search for those two files by name, I only find them in Music, not in Documents.

What's going on? This isn't just an issue of my iTunes music being a subcategory of my documents; I have to add both together, along with the other sections of my HD, to add up to my total storage capacity. Somehow my Mac seems to be storing my songs in two places at once, and not letting me delete them from one of those places. How do I fix this and free up my 5 GB of storage that I could be putting to better use?

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.13

Posted on Jan 26, 2020 11:38 PM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

239,465 points

Jan 28, 2020 10:06 AM in response to NathanW197

Do a Get info in the Finder on the Drive, how much free space does it show?

See if this is the purgeable stuff...

Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates.

Hit enter.

Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.

Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required

http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html

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Answer 2

NathanW197 Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 27, 2020 10:38 AM in response to BDAqua

I'm getting it from the Manage option within Storage, and adding up all of the total amounts to reach my total HD capacity. If I only add 0.3 GB (roughly the size of the actual files in my Documents folder) instead of 5 GB, then the numbers don't add up to the correct total. If I do use 5 GB, then they do add up to the correct total.

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Answer 3

NathanW197 Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 27, 2020 6:07 PM in response to BDAqua

I think I'm even less sure now what my HD is actually doing. Omni shows ~44 GB worth of files, out of a total HD of 120 GB. Does this mean I should have 76 GB free? If so, how do I go about doing that, when my laptop itself indicates that I have 70 GB free but 35 GB of that is "purgeable", and I don't seem to have any option to actually purge it?

If I can use Omni to clear the purgeable data, how do I do it? I don't really see any options. Right now I think it's just showing me what files are actually on my HD.

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Answer 4

NathanW197 Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 28, 2020 5:35 PM in response to BDAqua

I should have checked the disk info before following your directions so I'd know for sure, but it looks like that might have done it. I deleted only the oldest snapshot.

I was trying to clear space on my HD and ended up putting a lot of photos in the cloud and deleting them off my HD. I backed up my laptop yesterday evening after all that was done, but I'm guessing that my computer's oldest snapshot (also from yesterday evening) was holding onto a lot of that data still, for some reason. Either way, my purgeable space went from 35 GB yesterday to 6 GB today, and the rest was all free. That gives me enough space to do what I wanted to.

Thanks!

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