Unable to free space on hard drive

Question

Unable to free space on hard drive

I have been unable to free up space on my startup disk. I deleted several GB of movies and they did not go to the trash bin so I assumed they were deleted. However, when I monitored the storage on the System Information panel, before and after deleting this movies I observed negligible change in storage space.

Some other info:

1. External Hard Drive was used with time machine before but time machine turned off and external hard drive removed

2. trash emptied

3. Restarted computer

4. Drive verified in disk utility

Posted on Feb 24, 2015 10:59 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Feb 24, 2015 11:06 AM in response to marc.t.tremblay

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive

1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.

2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.

3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.

4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.

5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.

6. See The Storage Display.

You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.

You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.

Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

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Answer 2

K Shaffer

Level 7

34,966 points

Feb 24, 2015 11:08 AM in response to marc.t.tremblay

If the capacity of the hard disk drive in question, is rather huge, only a few dozen

movies may not appreciably make a noticeable difference after removing them...

What are the volumes and numbers of the device, or capacities, in question?

While there may be something else going on, you may need to archive more

of your content elsewhere, then choose whether or not to delete even more.

Does Disk Utility give you an indication of the exact numbers, before & after

you tried removing some content? A huge drive shows little change after only

a few GB has been added or removed. You could use some removal apps if

you are careful to not touch System files or important OS X content. For some

searches for undesirable removal, I've tried EasyFind. See Kappy's advice.

In example of a 1 TB HDD, you'd be hard pressed to free-up 30% easily. 😝

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Answer 3

Feb 24, 2015 11:22 AM in response to K Shaffer

The capacity of the hard drive is not in question. I looked at specific numbers before I posted this. I went to "About this Mac" and then check the System Storage tab were a number is provided. I deleted something like 15 GB of movies and noticed no change in the system storage allocated to movies.

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Answer 4

K Shaffer

Level 7

34,966 points

Feb 24, 2015 12:06 PM in response to marc.t.tremblay

And did Disk Utility indicate a decimal fraction of change the other did not?

Could be a matter of seeing if you can 'repair disk' using the utility, to see

what that does for it. Perhaps there maybe a failure or other issue in the

format of the hard drive; be sure to backup in more than one external HDD.

Disk Utility as used from OS X Utilities, can try & repair some hard drive issues.

Even a start-up in SafeBoot, then run repair disk permissions, + restart, may help.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

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Answer 5

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Feb 24, 2015 1:14 PM in response to marc.t.tremblay

If you've installed third-party software called "Disk Drill," I suggest you remove it according to the developer's instructions. If you prefer to keep the software, refer to the developer for support. Other software that automatically copies files moved to the Trash could have the same effect.

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Answer 6

Feb 24, 2015 1:47 PM in response to Linc Davis

I have no installed any third party software of the sort and I would like to be able to fix this problem without doing so. There must be something I'm missing here. I just have one hard drive, the one that is in the computer "Macintosh HD" which is 1 TB and I want to delete files from it to free space up. System Information says I have 4.22 GB free space even after I deleted something like 24 GB of raw video footage that I had saved in a folder on my desktop. It doesn't add up and I suspect these files aren't actually being deleted but rather being copied somewhere as they don't show up in the trash either.

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Answer 7

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Feb 24, 2015 2:01 PM in response to marc.t.tremblay

If you only have one hard drive, how do you back up?

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Answer 8

Feb 24, 2015 3:52 PM in response to Linc Davis

I had an external hard drive but I moved and I didn't bring it with me. I'm not backing anything up right now.

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Answer 9

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Feb 24, 2015 4:27 PM in response to marc.t.tremblay

You need to back up now, before you do anything else.

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Answer 10

Feb 24, 2015 6:12 PM in response to Linc Davis

Sounds ominous. Is your conclusion that something pretty serious is wrong with it and I need to take more drastic measures? I'm still holding out hope there is some setting that I am missing thats just a quick, minor fix.

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Answer 11

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,541 points

Feb 24, 2015 6:25 PM in response to marc.t.tremblay

My conclusion is that it's unsafe to do anything at all unless you have backups.

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Answer 12

Feb 24, 2015 9:14 PM in response to Linc Davis

Wouldn't I need an external hard drive to back it up? I only have the one hard drive. I realize its ideal to have a backup hard drive but I don't have one.

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