Deleting files doesn't free up storage space

GREAT!

The easyest thing to do, and the only thing that worked for me after trying more than 10 solution is to open your Terminal App in folder Application, then Utilities. Then you copy paste this

sudo rm -r /.cleverfiles

if it asks for your password, you type it, without minding if the script change or not (the * stay one)

Then enter.. and close your terminal.. and look at your finder.. i instantaneously see my hard drive free up more almost 300giga than i couldnt get back otherwise..

Hope it helps!

Thanks..This really helped me..

It's Jan. 22, 2015 and my entire hard drive was full (499 GB) for reasons I couldn't understand. I removed nearly 200GB of images I was planning on moving to an external drive anyway, and didn't gain even one GB. Called Apple Care. I searched for a solution while on hold with Apple Care. When he came back on the line and suggested I reindex my (brand new) machine, I suggested that we first try your solution of turning off time machine, unplugging the external drive and then turning time machine back on again, and regained 340GB instantly! (Yosemite 10.10.1)

Thanks so much for posting!

I did ask Apple Support to report this bug and bump it upstairs to their "fix it" team. It's a really bad bug.

I finally got help from Seagate Technical Support:

This WORKED!!!

*****DISCLAIMER NOTE: Removing, deleting, erasing, formatting or partitioning your drive will permanently destroy your important data (pictures, videos music, and documents), which Seagate cannot attempt to recover without cost to you.*****

1. Open the Finder menu > Applications > Utilities > then open Disk Utility.

2. Select the drive from the list on the left. A description of the drive appears in the right pane of the window.

3. You will see four tabs that are listed. They are First Aid, Erase, RAID, and Restore. Click on the Erase tab.

4. On Volume Format, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

5. Then at the bottom of the window you will see three buttons. Erase Free Space, Security, and Erase. Click Erase.

6. Click Erase again.

It will then format the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

None of these solutions has worked for me. I've never had Time Machine on. Removed everything from desktop and all apps. Still reads that I have 49 GB of movies somewhere, but I can't figure out where or how to erase. Any help is appreciated!

BEST SOLUTION TO REFLECT THE ACTUAL DRIVE SPACE

You could free up lots of space but it will only show that extra delete space following instructions below:

Open Disk Utility, click your disk’s name (normally “Macintosh HD”), and Verify Disk.

(It will show you the drive space on the bottom inside Disk Utility but your information on the disk will be not updated on Finder>About This MAC>Storage

until you have follow the process above) 🙂

Thanks for this post! Question… what do I do if the terminal responds "no such file or directory"? I did this command on my macbook and it worked beautifully. On my iMac it isn't working. Thank you again!

Thanks Dileesha Amarasena, your tips helped me to free up space in my macbook memory.

I tried a few times before I got it to work... I had to hit "shift" immediately upon hearing the login sound.

Thank you a TON! 65GB free now!

I was having this same problem. The solution of turning off TM, disconnecting the drive, reconnecting the drive, and turning TM back on worked for me as well. Thanks!

This was the winner for me - instantly got back 120GB's - thanks for the help!

None of these solutions worked for me. It turned out that because I always backed up using Wifi, it was saving everything to a sparse bundle. So even though I deleted a bunch of backups, the sparse bundle wouldn't reflect the space I had freed up. I had to manually compact it and I was able to free up over 100G of space. I used the information from this website to do it http://pondini.org/TM/12.html Hope this helps someone! Note it takes a really long time to compact. I had to wait overnight for it to finish.

This worked for me also amd freed up the 40Gb in movies I had deleted. Thanks.