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Disk occupied by Time Machine Local Snapshot

I run VMWare Fusion which uses a large file, about 54GB. I needed to revert to an older version of the file so I deleted the bad one, mounted an external drive with a good version of the file, and used the Finder to try to drag and drop to copy it. This failed with a message from the Finder there isn't enough space. However, according to the Finder there is 84GB of space available on the destination. I've rebooted multiple times and used Disk Utility to repair permissions and verify the destination is ok. No errors. I checked the Console and there I see the messages I've pasted at the bottom. Doing some searching I found this quote in a Support article:

Note: You may notice a difference in available space statistics between Disk Utility, Finder, and Get Info inspectors. Those differences are expected and can be safely ignored. The Finder displays the available space on the disk without accounting for the local snapshots, because local snapshots will surrender their disk space if needed.


Based on the below log, it seems the agent is unable to free up the space. Any idea how to repair this? It looks like, even though this large file is excluded from Time Machine backups, that TM has created a local copy and now can't delete it. I'm running 10.8.5 on a MBAir 13". Thanks.


9/18/13 7:25:20.806 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: Received request for 54.98 GB of free space on volume /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs, operation UUID: (null)

9/18/13 7:25:20.836 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: Current free space: 25.86 GB, recoverable space from Time Machine Local Snapshots: 58.46 GB, recoverable space from Package Kit: Zero KB, recoverable space from Commerce Kit Zero KB, total recoverable space: 58.46 GB

9/18/13 7:25:20.836 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: 25.86 GB free on /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs

9/18/13 7:25:20.837 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: 25.86 GB free on /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs

9/18/13 7:25:20.837 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: Recovering space from PackageKit sandboxes

9/18/13 7:25:20.841 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: 25.86 GB free on /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs

9/18/13 7:25:20.842 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: Recovering space from CommerceKit

9/18/13 7:25:20.843 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: 25.86 GB free on /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs

9/18/13 7:25:20.843 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: Recovering space from Time Machine local snapshots

9/18/13 7:25:20.844 PM com.apple.mtmd[59]: request free space: 54983233536 on: /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs

9/18/13 7:25:20.844 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: 25.86 GB free on /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs

9/18/13 7:25:20.845 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: Recovering space from GenStore

9/18/13 7:25:20.845 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: Unable to purge generation store.

9/18/13 7:25:20.846 PM ReclaimSpaceAgent[407]: 25.86 GB free on /Users/ronaldg/Fusion VMs

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012)

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 5:32 PM

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5 replies

Sep 19, 2013 4:59 AM in response to Linc Davis

I woke up this morning and tried the copy again: failed with the same error.


I then tried Linc's suggestion of turning TM off(but I didn't turn it back on). The copy failed again. So I did some more internet searching for solutions. In doing so I decided to check the Backups space shown in the System Profiler again and it showed almost no backup space (briefly because the profiler crashed right after displaying). So I tried the copy again and it worked.


Bottom line is I think turning TM off did the trick, but it took some time to free up all the space because the local backup was more than 50GB.


Thanks Linc!

Nov 20, 2013 7:36 AM in response to Ron Guest

Ron, I had this issue as well when transferring VM images between two disks. Both the source and destination are excluded from time machine but this process quickly bloated the local "backup" area on my drive.


I think the lack of consistency between what the system report shows as your disk usage and what finder reports is appalling. Turning off time machine, waiting to see the reclaimspaceagent run and then re-checking the disk usage in system report showed these local backups were properly removed.

Disk occupied by Time Machine Local Snapshot

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