Deleting files doesn't free up storage space

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Level 1

11 points

Deleting files doesn't free up storage space

I'm a long-time Mac user with a 2010 MacBook Pro (320GB) now running Mavericks. About a week ago I screwed up my iTunes and tried to restore from Time Machine. But I can't because I only have 38GB free and the TM backup is about 40. So I moved big files over to my attached drive to free up space. But no matter how much I move (and it's been tens of GB) I still only have 35-38GB free (It varies across this range for no apparent reason). The storage allocated to Movies and Pictures decreases, but rather than free space increasing, the mysterious category Backups does. I now have 124GB allocated to Backups. Yes, I delete the files and empty trash after moving all these files from my system. And I restart and even wait overnight hoping that the system cleanup routines that run in the dark of night will do their magic. I have tried several times doing the TM restore of iTunes and each time I get the message that I don't have enough free space. Can anyone tell me how to break free of this. I would sure be greatful. Thanks.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Nov 4, 2013 5:12 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

mario49

Community Specialist

Nov 7, 2013 2:17 PM in response to lengaydos

Hello lengaydos,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

For more information on this, take a look at:

Increase disk space

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677

Find out how much space you have

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

Best of luck,

Mario

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Answer 2

lengaydos Author

Level 1

11 points

Nov 7, 2013 9:40 PM in response to lengaydos

I got help on this from AppleCare today. Seems the problem was related to a glitch in Time Machine. After turning off TM, dsiconnecting from the external drive it is on, then reconnecting the drive and restarting TM, the disk space was returned to me as free to use! Not sure what caused this (but it affected both my computer and my wife's) but it was probably caused by the computers being unable to connect to TM for awhile and storing the backuips on the computers' drive instead. When I deleted files, rather than really being deleted they were also marked as backups.

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Answer 3

Jan 9, 2014 6:09 PM in response to lengaydos

Thanks for sharing this solution. The same thing was happening to me -- I deleted 100GB of stuff, Finder was reporting it was gone but Disk Utility showed I hadn't freed up any space. This was on a laptop which is normally not connected to its time machine backup. Interestingly simply connecting to the drive and letting Time Machine do a backup didn't clear the space, I had to follow your procedure of shutting off time machine, disconnecting the drive, reconnecting the drive and turning time machine back on, then it finally cleared the space.

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Answer 4

Jan 21, 2014 11:01 PM in response to lengaydos

I'm having the same problem. Can you lay out the steps again to fix it. What do I need to do to get my drive space back?

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Answer 5

Jan 22, 2014 12:56 PM in response to Markarian421

Im having the same problem, how do I get my disk space back.

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Answer 6

lengaydos Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 22, 2014 6:28 PM in response to jeffjaco1175

If you go to About This Mac and select storage, you'll see a colorful bar chart showing your disk usage by category. If you have a large amount of space in Backups it's probably because for some reason Time Machine won't release the "temporary" space it uses. I solved it by the process I outlined earlier. That is I went into Time Machine, turned it off and selected my backup disk. I then selected Remove Disk. After restarting, I went back to TM and reselected the disk I had removed. When I went to About This Mac the backup files were gone and my disk space restored. That is how I solved the problem originally. Today I went to my wife's Macbook Air, saw there again was a large backup in About This Mac and tried the process. This time nothing changed. I'm not sure why it worked earlier and for Markarian421 but isn't working now. So I'm now also looking for an answer. In my case TM is hosted on an Apple Time Machine. Not sure if that makes a difference. Can anyone else help out?

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Answer 7

Jan 23, 2014 10:34 AM in response to lengaydos

Im verry surprised Mavricks dosent offer a update to download to fix this problem. I am fearful I will run out of disk space

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Answer 8

hands4

Level 4

2,246 points

Jan 23, 2014 8:07 PM in response to jeffjaco1175

Time Machine Snapshots:

Time Machine will use up to 80% of the disk space for local snapshots.

If you turn Time Machine OFF, Time Machine will immediately stop creating new ones, and start deleting all existing snapshots (that may take a while).

Time Machine FAQ, What are Local Snapshots: http://pondini.org/TM/30.html

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Answer 9

lengaydos Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 24, 2014 5:56 PM in response to hands4

Thank you very much for forwarding this link from pondini!

Finally, it all makes sense! One thing I just recently noticed is that my iMac doesn't say in TM preferences that local backups are kept but my wife's Air does. It also explains why I was able to delete the backups a month or so ago with the procedure I outlined but couldn't replicate it a few days ago. In the former case I actually turned off TM for awhile which was evidently sufficient for having it delete the local snapshots. A few days ago I didn't give it enough time. I'm a little surprised that Apple Care support wasn't able to explain this to me but am very grateful you have. Thanks again.

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Answer 10

Dileesha

Level 1

0 points

Apr 27, 2014 12:06 AM in response to lengaydos

Hello friends !

I just found out the way to easily fix the ' actual free space not showing ' problem in Mac OS X 10.9.2.

1. Turn off your macbook ( i used a macbook ) and remove all external storage devices ( portable hard drive, usb drive, flash drive etc )

2. Turn on your macbook and wait for ' WELCOME SCREEN SOUND ', and soon after you heard it press and hold ' SHIFT ' key on your keyboard. You must not press the key before welcome screen sound. It should be pressed just after the sound.

3. It will take you to a white color window with some progress bar at bottom. This may take few minutes.

4. Macbook will take you to the login page where you need to type your password to enter. Top right corner you will see a text ' Safe Boot Mode ' in RED. If you see so you're doing it right, if no please follow the procedure again.

5. Then computer will take you to desktop but you will notice that the computer performs very slowly. Then click and open ' TRASH BIN '. You will see all your deleted files are still in your Trash Bin. So click ' EMPTY ' button on top right corner of the window.

6. You are done ! Right click on the Hard Drive Icon on desktop and then GET INFO. You will be happy to see your empty space back.

Hope this will help you guys ! 🙂

Thanks,
Dileesha Amarasena.

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Answer 11

May 11, 2014 9:22 AM in response to lengaydos

None of the solutions above worked for me, however I think I now found the solution:

when I first started with this problem I sent my backup files that were located on my external backup drive to the recycle bin. Then I kept getting the drive full problem that is being described above even though the drive was empy (files sent to the recycle bin). What I am realizing is that the files on my external drive that were sent to the recycle bin were too big to fit in the recycle bin so they were not acutully taken off the externaly drive until I emptied the recycle bin itself (maybe an added precaution or a bug in the program). Only then must they have been actually removed from the external backup drive because the reporting problem is now (not a reporting problem after all)!

fix: empty your recycle bin including locked files

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Answer 12

May 11, 2014 9:23 AM in response to lengaydos

None of the solutions above worked for me, however I think I now found the solution:

when I first started with this problem I sent my backup files that were located on my external backup drive to the recycle bin. Then I kept getting the drive full problem that is being described above even though the drive was empty (files sent to the recycle bin). What I am realizing is that the files on my external drive that were sent to the recycle bin were too big to fit in the recycle bin so they were not actually taken off the external drive until I emptied the recycle bin itself (maybe an added precaution or a bug in the program). Only then must they have been actually removed from the external backup drive because the reporting problem is now (not a reporting problem after all)!

fix: empty your recycle bin including locked files

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Answer 13

dbaxter3

Level 1

8 points

Jun 24, 2014 10:13 PM in response to lengaydos

Hey Everyone, I was having the same issue, PLUS before that I was never able to empty the trash without entering a password. I thought this was normal, but it wasn't. It turns out all the stuff I was deleting was invisible inside of trash. I ran a command in terminal and freed up over 60GB of files I thought I had deleted. Check it out here: Re: Password Needed to Move Items to Trash - How Do I Fix This?

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Answer 14

usaexpat

Level 1

11 points

Sep 28, 2014 4:15 PM in response to lengaydos

This was a huge help and indeed did the trick. I turned TM off; restarted my MBP and checked that the storage was reclaimed. Turned TM back on and re-checked that nothing changed. All good. Thanks for posting!

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Answer 15

Calvi19

Level 1

0 points

Oct 4, 2014 9:41 AM in response to lengaydos

My solution was connecting the TM backup disk, from 27 gb that Finder show me, it went up to 100 gb. I´m in Mavericks 10.9.2 with a 13" retina macbook pro.

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