I can't reinstall Ventura, it says not enough storage, but my disk is nearly empty

My Mac has been getting sluggish so I want to reinstall Ventura. But I can't because when I try it says I have only 16 GB free space. However macOS reports I have 167 GB free space (i.e., System Settings / General / Data) and the Disk Utility says I have 27 GB free space. Why the discrepancies? I have rebooted my Mac several times after deleting all my apps. (I've deleted well over 100 GB, and my Trash Bin is empty. Don't tell me to check my Trash Bin, please.)

To be more specific, Disk Utility says I have "9 GB used, 208 GB other volumes, 27 GB free." And no, I never created any volumes on this drive. And the System Settings app says I have 18 GB documents, 41 GB System Data, 13 GB macOS, and 167 GB available." So even though I just deleted well over 100 GB of apps, that storage didn't show up in Disk Utility. Clearly Disk Utility disagrees with macOS, and the Ventura Installer seems to believe the incorrect Disk Utility numbers, although it says I have only 16 GB of free space, which is about half of what Disk Utility reports.

Perhaps I should try deleting the partition and reinstalling macOS? Or does anyone have a proper and safer solution?

My Mac is an M1 Mac Mini.

Mac mini (M1, 2020)

Posted on Aug 6, 2023 9:07 PM

Top-ranking reply

MiniMe2 Author

Level 1

38 points

Posted on Aug 7, 2023 2:01 PM

Thanks, but the problem was that macOS Finder was saying my disk was 80% free space but Disk Utility and Ventura Installer were both saying I was 90% full. It wasn't a "performance issue". When I reformatted my partition, and reinstalled Ventura, the lost space was visible again. So now I have no lost space and no performance issues (once I realized iCloud Private Relay was slowing my network speeds by well over 99%.) I'm not afraid to download etrecheck, it's just that there's no reason to use it now. If you've ever run etrecheck on a new M1 Mac mini, you already have the same results that you would see if it was run on my Mini. Right? Now I'm busy re-installing apps like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc.

View in context

I can't reinstall Ventura, it says not enough storage, but my disk is nearly empty

Similar questions