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Pak^Man

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 28, 2008
192
0
Columbus, OH
Hi Everybody,

I have an issue with my MBA (2012, 11", i7, 8gb, 256gb) not being able to reclaim all the space on its SSD after I deleted some data as part of some spring cleaning.

Before I deleted the data, my drive showed ~40 GB of free space. I copied some data off the SSD on to an external drive, and deleted about 30 GB.

At this point, my free space (as shown in the "Get Info" menu) went up to ~71 GB. However, the Disk Untility shows only 35 GB free. I have even run a disk repair, but that only reclaimed 2 GB more. :confused:

Can you suggest how I can fix, what appears to be, deleted data still taking up space on the SSD?

Thanks in advance!!
 
Last edited:

The-Pro

macrumors 65816
Dec 2, 2010
1,453
40
Germany
All I can say is disk utility tells me I have 7GB less free then what I actually have :D

Have you tried a restart?
If it says 71GB free in the Get Info of your SSD then you have 71GB free.
 

Pak^Man

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 28, 2008
192
0
Columbus, OH
All I can say is disk utility tells me I have 7GB less free then what I actually have :D

Have you tried a restart?
If it says 71GB free in the Get Info of your SSD then you have 71GB free.


Yes, I've done multiple restarts to no avail.

I even tried to test the empty space, in case disk utility was "confused". But if I try to copy anything over 35 GB to the SSD, I get the "not enough free space" error.
 

firmansolutions

macrumors member
May 31, 2010
52
9
This could possibly be the disparity between "free space" and Time Machine local backups.

Does this help?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878

This is a really valuable tip. I have a 750gb HD in the DVD bay on my MBP 15" and I just deleted approx 300gb of files from it but the disk space did not free up. Checking the storage dialog as suggested shows its all taken "Backup" category files. I suppose this is Time Machine hanging onto a local copy of those files. I am connected to my external Time Machine backup, so this would seem a bit redundant. How long is it going to hold that local backup?
 
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