I don't know what's happening, but when I go to Disk Utility, my 1.5TB disk seems like only having 43MB of free space, when in reality, only 800GB or so are being used. Where are the other 700GB?
Here's a screenshot
If you do the math you will see that I'm not even close to 1TB, let alone 1.5TB...
What may be causing this and how to fix it?
Thank you!
For those with the same issue, mine went away by deleting 2 of the 4 volumes and then running First Aid on both the disk and then the container. I know this is not a solution for everyone, if deleting volumes isn't an option, but since I was ok with deleting them because they are just backup disks (I have more than 1), the problem went away and now Disk Utility shows me the accurate disk space I have available.
For those with the same issue, mine went away by deleting 2 of the 4 volumes and then running First Aid on both the disk and then the container. I know this is not a solution for everyone, if deleting volumes isn't an option, but since I was ok with deleting them because they are just backup disks (I have more than 1), the problem went away and now Disk Utility shows me the accurate disk space I have available.
The extra used space may be taken up by an APFS snapshot.
View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
You can also use OmniDiskSweeper to see where all the largest files/folders are located. I'm not sure if it will help here though. I don't believe it will see APFS snapshots or at least will not see the contents of an APFS snapshot.
Your screenshot shows two "WD Elements 25A2 Media" items. Are these two separate physical drives or are both items referring to the same device? I know sometimes Disk Utility will get confused and end up duplicating entries on the left pane.
Thanks for the reply!
This is actually my external drive for backups.
And the screenshot is from the main container (as you can see at the top) so all those different colors are actually volumes that I have inside my disk. I have 4 volumes I created (the ones with D1 in the beginning) and then the extra one that was created automatically (the APFS Physical Store disk4s2).
So I assume that this actually gives me the available space of the disk, not just a volume, right?
Also, even if the Disk Utility may show incorrect information, the issue is that I'm using a backup app (Carbon Copy Cloner) and the app also says that the disk is full, so it doesn't backup anymore. And I'm having the exact same issue with another disk. I'm not sure if this is a macOS issue, if it's the app that's doing something weird to my disks...
But as you can see from this new screenshot, the total amount of space used by the volumes is less than 800GB, on a 1.5TB drive...
The information details in the Storage Management area of macOS is known to be incorrect. All that matters is the free storage space listed in the Finder. Make sure to always have at least 20GB of free storage space available at all times for the normal operation of macOS.
The screenshot you posted also may not be showing everything to us such as other volumes or partitions/containers. To see if you have any other volumes or partitions/Containers, launch the Terminal app and issue the following command and post a screenshot of the results (I'm assuming this is an internal drive):
diskutil list internal
I believe the APFS snapshots is a feature only available on Monterey? I'm on Catalina. On the link you shared it only mentions Monterey...
I will check OmniDiskSweeper even for other files and see if that helps me get some space back.
Yes, the "WD Elements 25A2 Media" are 2 separate disks. I don't think you can rename those, right? At least when I right click them there's no option to rename them. But even when only one is connected, I experience the same issue...
tiagorocha wrote:
I believe the APFS snapshots is a feature only available on Monterey? I'm on Catalina. On the link you shared it only mentions Monterey...
APFS snapshots are available in macOS 10.13+ where the APFS file system was first used.
Edit: Although how you view the APFS snapshots may be different with Monterey. I'm not sure if Disk Utility had the option for viewing snapshots in older versions of macOS. Here is another article which works for macOS 10.13+:
https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/56681-working-with-macos-snapshots/
Many macOS backup utilities will leverage an APFS snapshot as will macOS when running an OS update/upgrade. I'm not sure about when installing third party apps.
1.5TB disk says it's full when only around 800GB are being used?