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Free disk space not changing after deleting (large) photos

Hi,


I wasn't sure whether to post this on the iPhoto board or on the MBA one, since it's not clear if it's a system-level issue or not. Anyway, I had about 30GB of free space on my 256GB MBA and the other day I deleted four or five albums of photos from my DSLR that I'd downloaded to my computer, after I made backups of them elsewhere. In total there were about 3,500 photos, roughly 24MB each on average. I made sure that after deleting them, I deleted my iPhoto Trash as well as the system Trash. Neverless, my level of free space hardly budged and if anything, it decreased slightly. I've read several threads saying to wait a while as sometimes the system takes a delay to adjust - that's fine.


It's now almost five days later and the situation remains the same, if not worse. I ran DaisyDisk and aside from the usual large folders (my movies in iTunes etc, none of which had been added to since I deleted all those photos), the only one I couldn't recognise was this folder iLifeAssetManagement (9GB). I know that there are a few threads about this one, and most people seem to suggest you can clear this if you're happy to lose the content in your Photo Stream. The thing is, I've looked through some of the images in this folder and I'm quite positive that a number of them are from the DSLR albums (there are CR2 files, which I believe is Canon's exclusive RAW format). Some of the others are definitely from my iCloud Photo stream. I'm more than glad to lose all the DSLR ones, though I'd like to keep the iCloud ones and I don't really want to have to sort through 5,000-odd files. I'm positive that this folder is related to why I never gained that free space.


Has anybody else had issues like this and any suggestions for clearing this folder of all the files I already meant to delete, whilst keeping the others? Or have you had issues relating to this? Any help much appreciated.


Thanks.

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 14, 2014 3:27 PM

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5 replies

Mar 14, 2014 5:57 PM in response to dcjlegrand

If you've installed third-party software called "Disk Drill," I suggest you remove it according to the developer'sinstructions. If you prefer to keep the software, refer to the developer for support. Otherwise, see below.

You may notice a difference in available space statistics between Disk Utility, Finder, and Get Info inspectors. This is 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.


About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs

Mar 17, 2014 1:53 PM in response to dominic23

I tried this but it didn't seem to do anything, unfortunately. A day later (and following a restart) it was the same. Today I checked once more and it had gone up to 91GB, inexplicably (I haven't done anything with the computer except write a couple of e-mails and watching Netflix). Perhaps iPhoto keeps backups of photos for a week or so, even if you've purged them from the Trash? Anyway, thanks to all for your replies.

Free disk space not changing after deleting (large) photos

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