disk utility says hard drive full but system storage says it isn't

Question

disk utility says hard drive full but system storage says it isn't

Hi there,

After receiving some disk full errors in final cut pro, I discovered that my hard drive is almost full according to the finder info and in disc utility. it came somewhat out of the blue. Finder is also telling me that 1.05tb is purgeable which must be the problem somehow). Problem is I can't find the source of the purgeable space.

When I look at System Settings/General/Storage it says only about 877GB is used.

Some extra info:

I have restarted the system recently.
I did try: Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac. Although I don't know if it was successful.
Caches only seem to take up about 6gb
I can't seem to find the excess data by searching for large folders. It's almost as if its hidden.

Anyway thats my story.

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 13.5

Posted on Nov 14, 2023 4:29 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BobHarris

Level 9

55,055 points

Nov 14, 2023 4:50 PM in response to nippynippster

Time Machine snapshots

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

    Snapshots for volume group containing disk /:
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-01-142742.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-01-163342.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-01-174425.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-01-192243.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-01-203820.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-01-222814.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-01-232930.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-02-002823.local
    com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-04-02-012748.local

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2021-04-01-142742 # deletes 1 snapshot

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots / # deletes all the snapshots

Also see:

diskutil apfs listSnapshots /

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,470 points

May 29, 2024 4:13 PM in response to nippynippster

I don't think anyone has explained this, just resolved it.

They both say the same thing. Finder Get Info shows you have 1.12 TB Available with 1.05 of that purgeable showing 1.93TB used. Purgeable means it can be removed if something needs it. The TM local snapshots will often be the majority of the purgeable space.

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