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Free up disk space

Hi I have an old Macbook pro. Out of the 500GB disk space had 480Gb used and as such very slow. I deleted all my photos for almost 380GB step by step by permanently removing them from Photo app

But still not showing any free disk space. When tried to use disk utility the erase botton is light gray and is giving me a message that “this operation can not be performd becaise you can not unmoumt the volume you are booted from”

Any idea how can I fix this?

Thanks

Posted on Mar 12, 2018 7:42 PM

Reply
4 replies

Mar 12, 2018 8:20 PM in response to hamedfromwayne

See "What is 'Other' and What Can I Do About It?"

<https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5142>

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Also see Time Machine Local Snapshots

<http://pondini.org/TM/30.html>

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OmniDiskSweeper (free download)

<http://www.omnigroup.com/more>

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When using OmniDiskSweeper, or any utility that shows all your files... See the following article if you want to run it as root

<http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_recover_missing_hard_drive_space>

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Boiler Plate Warnings:

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If you have a recurring, running out of disk space, problem, then OmniDiskSweeper may help identify where the space is going. Posting the suspected locations and files will help the forum help you to figure it out. Remember, we cannot see into your disk, you have to give us information to work with.

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DO NOT delete files in your Home Folder -> Library tree as there are things like your iPhone backups, your email messages, your application preferences, etc… If you think you have found something in your Home Folder -> Library that can be deleted, you should ask first.

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DO NOT delete files outside your home folder, as you may end up deleting something essential to macOS, and turn your Mac into an expensive “Door Stop”.

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I will point out that you will find some very large files in private -> var -> vm (these are the macOS virtual memory paging files (swapfiles) and where macOS stores the copy of RAM when your Mac is put to sleep). The swapfile(s) get deleted on reboot, and the sleep image is just going to be created again when you put your Mac to sleep.

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If you think you have found something to delete outside your home folder, it would be best to ask first before deleting. There are many examples of people deleting files outside their home folder, or renaming files, or changing the ownership or file permissions, and then their Mac stops running. Do not be one of those people. Ask first.

Mar 13, 2018 3:39 PM in response to hamedfromwayne

If you have BOTH iPhotos and Photos libraries, you should know that the Photos library was initially created by using hard links to the iPhotos library.


A hardlink is a duplicate directory entry, which means you have 2 directory entries pointing to exact same file, and the file gets a number of links reference count incremented. If you delete one directory entry, the number of links reference count gets decremented. The body of the file itself does not get deleted until the number of links reference count for that file goes to zero.


OmniDiskSweeper can tell you were all your space is hiding. It is extremely useful for this kind of thing.

Free up disk space

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