Macbook Pro says not space for an upgrade when there's plenty of storage space! I have 84 Gb out of 250 Gb free on the hard drive.

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Level 1

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Macbook Pro says not space for an upgrade when there's plenty of storage space! I have 84 Gb out of 250 Gb free on the hard drive.

I keep getting the same message that about 9 Gb of space is needed, I remove another 20 Gb and get the same message. I'm trying to update from BigSur 11.6.2 to 12.6 on my 2017 Macbook Pro.

I've emptied the trash and I know all the tips about making more room on your hd and there should be plenty of room now but I keep getting same message no matter how much I move off the hd.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Sep 25, 2022 3:00 PM

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Answer 1

KitC3 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 30, 2022 5:15 PM in response to HWTech

That is very interesting. I did manage to update the os. Thanks!!

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

69,224 points

Sep 26, 2022 5:50 PM in response to KitC3

The items you deleted may still reside on the computer due to how the APFS file system works. The most likely place the data still resides is in an APFS snapshot. These APFS snapshots are usually created by backup apps and will usually be deleted some time after the backup has been transferred to external media. You can use these links to learn more:

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

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

If you copied the data to another location on the same APFS volume, then the data is only stored one time on an APFS volume even though there are two links to the data. This means if you delete the one link to the data, the data still remains on the APFS volume until you delete the second link.

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/04/14/copy-move-and-clone-files-in-apfs-a-primer/

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Macbook Pro says not space for an upgrade when there's plenty of storage space! I have 84 Gb out of 250 Gb free on the hard drive.

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