Disk space not freed after deleting 200 GB of files AND emptying the trash.

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Level 1

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Disk space not freed after deleting 200 GB of files AND emptying the trash.

First off, I DO NOT NEED advice on how to find big or unnecessary files, or how to delete them, so please save your boilerplate answers. Thank you.

Problem: I DELETED a bit over 200 GB worth of files on my iMac's 1 TB Fusion Drive. I then EMPTIED the TRASH and expected the amount of free space in Finder's "Get Info" screen to go up by 200 GB as usual, as it has been for the past 15 years I've been a Mac user.

Not so, it remained exactly as before, at 475 GB. This makes zero sense.

Disk Utility and About This Mac / Storage both indicate that a mysterious "Other" volume holds about 290 GB of something and give the wrong amount of free space.

Running 'du -hsx' tells me 302 GB is used, which is about right.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Nov 12, 2020 12:34 PM

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Answer 1

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Marabear Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 12, 2020 10:33 PM in response to Keith Barkley

Please read the question! I don't have problems understanding how to find big/unnecessary files.

Besides , I never used iPhoto and don't use Photos. Apple's consumer software is intolerable.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

55,304 points

Nov 12, 2020 4:47 PM in response to Marabear

If you are using macOS 10.13+ and the APFS file system, then the files you deleted may still exist within an APFS snapshot. These APFS snapshots are used by macOS and various backup utilities like Time Machine. Many of these APFS snapshots will be automatically deleted after about a week or after TM sends the backup to the external TM drive.

You can examine the current APFS snapshots and try to thin or even delete them using this article as a guide:

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/reclaiming-drive-space-by-thinning-apple-file-system-snapshot-backups/

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Answer 3

Marabear Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 12, 2020 10:45 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you very much for this tip!

(And sorry, forgot to mention I'm running 10.15.6. )

I don't use Time Machine but it seems I have accidentally switched on Techtool Protection which had during the past three days created a bunch of snapshots, exactly during the time when I made the big reorg on my disks and removed lots of stuff from my iMac HDD.

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Answer 4

Nov 13, 2020 6:39 AM in response to Marabear

It had nothing to do with your large file big-game hunting expertise. Photos and a migrated iPhoto Library share original files via hard links, so if you delete one of the pair you don't regain nearly as much space as you might think.

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Answer 5

Nov 12, 2020 1:21 PM in response to Marabear

Did you delete an old iPhotos library that had been migrated to Photos?

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Disk space not freed after deleting 200 GB of files AND emptying the trash.

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