Deleted 200 GB file from an APFS volume but space not released

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Deleted 200 GB file from an APFS volume but space not released

I am runnng Mojave 10.14.6 on an iMac. My APFS container disk has 5 volumes. I boot from the 2nd volume in case that matters. The first volume, Data, is not backed up by Time Machine and that is where I deleted the 200 GB file. I also emptied the trash.

Just to confirm that Time Machine is not the problem, I did run

sudo tmutil thinLocalSnapshots / 10000000000 4

It deleted 5 local snapshots but this did not free up any disk space on volume Data. This is the solution to this problem listed on other threads.

I back up volume Data using SuperDuper but I need to free up this space because my back-up drive is not otherwise large enough. Can anyone help?

iMac 27" 5K, macOS 10.14

Posted on May 24, 2020 7:36 AM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

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117,142 points

May 24, 2020 9:15 AM in response to budsimrin

I'm not sure why the space doesn't get recovered immediately. Are you using an SSD? When you delete things from an SSD, it takes a while for the drive to make that location available to write, again. I don't know if this is the issue, though, just a guess. If the space magically appears in a day or so, that may be it.

I boot from the 2nd volume in case that matters.

Yes, that is how Catalina works. That is where the OS is stored.

The first volume, Data, is not backed up by Time Machine

I can understand the concept of not backing up the OS, buy why aren't you backing up your data? That would be the important part. You can always get the OS from the App Store. If you back up with SuperDuper, that's good, but why bother backing up the OS with Time Machine? I'm not even sure that would be restorable on its own. Are you certain it is only backing up Macintosh HD? It should only offer that as an option, but that refers to both Volumes.

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Answer 2

budsimrin Author

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21 points

May 24, 2020 12:08 PM in response to Barney-15E

Barney, I appreciate your prompt reply. I will continue to monitor the available space and report if it suddenly restores. And, yes, I am using an SSD.

As for my backup strategy. I back up most of my data using both SuperDuper and TimeMachine and also Dropbox cloud. However, the volume data contains huge files like Parallels virtual machines (10s to 100s of GB each) not suitable for Time Machine since frequent tiny changes in those data sets mean the entire large data files would be saved by TimeMachine over and over. Instead, I generate several SD backups as well as Dropbox for that data.

One additional bit of info about my problem. While neither the Finder, SuperDuper, nor Disk Utility recognize that the space has been freed, GrandPerspective (an app that identifies how space is used) DOES recognize the smaller size. If anyone else has an idea why my space isn't being released by Mojave, I would appreciate any ideas.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

117,142 points

May 24, 2020 1:55 PM in response to budsimrin

Spotlight generates the storage display. I don't think the display is Live in any way. I have noticed that it will change if you leave it open for a while. As Spotlight figures out where everything belongs, the display gets adjusted.

When you delete files, I don't think the Spotlight index is updated quickly to have the display update to reflect. Finder may be the same sort of thing. It just has a cached file size.

When you use a tool like GrandPerspective, it just runs through the entire drive and lists all the files with their sizes as currently exists on the disk.

Your backup strategy makes sense. Did you just put Macintosh HD - Data in the exclusion list? There is a duplicate mount point in the System folder. Do your TM backup sizes make sense that it is not backing it up. Time Machine may be smart enough to exclude that second mount point.

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Answer 4

budsimrin Author

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May 26, 2020 7:32 AM in response to Barney-15E

Well... sun of a gun. I can hardly believe it. Barney, you were correct about the slow updating of my ssd in Finder. It took 2 full days, (or maybe it was 3?) but today the Finder (and SuperDuper, etc.) registered the fact that I had deleted a 200 GB file and reduced the size of the partition.

Thank you. I would never have thought to just wait a day or 3.

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Answer 5

budsimrin Author

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21 points

May 26, 2020 7:40 AM in response to Barney-15E

I did not put all of volume Data in the exclusion list. Rather, I put selected the certain folders within Data that include the large data files, and I put those folders individually in the exclusion list.

I don't quite understand what a mount point is but I have checked the Time Machine backups using Finder as well as I have browsed them using Time Machine and the excluded files are not included. So my Time Machine backup sizes make sense to me. Also, the TM backups go back more than a year before recycling, which is what I was expecting.

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Answer 6

Barney-15E

Level 10

117,142 points

May 26, 2020 9:18 AM in response to budsimrin

Thank you. I would never have thought to just wait a day or 3.

SSDs work differently than a spinning hard drive, as I explained above. I imagine that is what you saw. When you delete a small file, you wouldn't notice. I'm still not certain that was the issue, but it sure sounds like it.

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Answer 7

Barney-15E

Level 10

117,142 points

May 26, 2020 9:23 AM in response to budsimrin

I don't quite understand what a mount point is

It's just the path where a storage device is mapped into the File System so you can access it. You don't really open the drive itself, you access it via the File System which mounts the drive into a mount point. /Volumes/ is the typical mount point in macOS, but in Catalina, it mounts the - Data volume inside the /System folder.

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Deleted 200 GB file from an APFS volume but space not released

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