Hi all. I have deleted about 180GB of data from my drive but the reported disk usage stays the same. I do not use Time Machine. How can I reclaim the disk space
Mac OS 15.6.1
2TB External SSD Drive formatted APFS
MacBook Pro (M1, 2020)
Did you empty your trash?
Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support
Is it safe to delete 'com.apple.ctcategor… - Apple Community
August 2025 thread and links therein: Storage space is too large on Mac - Apple Community
Did you empty your trash?
Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support
Is it safe to delete 'com.apple.ctcategor… - Apple Community
August 2025 thread and links therein: Storage space is too large on Mac - Apple Community
Reported disk usage where? In Disk Utility or somewhere else?
Regardless, deleting files doesn't automatically free up the space. It becomes 'purgeable' space, and macOS will purge when and only when it feels that it needs to do so. For example, on my internal drive:
Given the available space, my Mac feels no need to free up more.
Chris Courtney-Stones wrote:
2TB External SSD Drive formatted APFS
Also notice that APFS does not require disk space if you duplicate a file. So if you delete the duplicate (or even a slightly edited duplicate) you won't gain any/much free disk space.
It takes time for an SSD to revert the storage into writeable blocks. The less free space you have the longer that process takes. It won’t happen immediately and could take overnight if left on.
Chris Courtney-Stones wrote:
Hi all. I have deleted about 180GB of data from my drive but the reported disk usage stays the same. I do not use Time Machine. How can I reclaim the disk space
Mac OS 15.6.1
2TB External SSD Drive formatted APFS
Have you given it a few days for the OS to release the space...?
Hi, thank you for your response.
In Disk Utility this is what shows.
The drive shows 327GB used and I deleted, (and emptied the trash), of a 157GB folder and a 30GB folder but the drive still shows 327GB used. The problem is not the space available on this drive but on the drive I use to back this up to which is now tight on space.
[Edited by Moderator]
Yes, I did empty my trash
Hi, the folders deleted were actually a backup of someone else's system so they could do a clean install so they were certainly not a duplicate of any files that I have
Deleting files is not reclaiming disk space
