Cannot upgrade from Catalina - Not Enough Disk Space?!

[contacos]

I have a 256 GB SSD in my MacBook Pro with over 160 GB free (most of my stuff is stored in the Cloud) but when I try to update from an USB stick upon boot, it says my volume does not have enough disk space free (it claims my volume only has 25 GB and 0 kb free).

Now I checked disk utility and it shows two containers, one with my name ( 25 GB) and another one with "Name + data" and it says the "data" ons has 159 GB available but at the same time shows 200 GB as used.

That doesn't make any sense ...

 

[SmOgER]

The correct reading would be from about this mac - storage.

I mean this:

 

[contacos]

yep it says 173 GB available but when I boot into the USB Stick to install BigSur on this volume, it says I have 0kb free

 

[SmOgER]

The screen I included shows free space there is in your whole drive (not any specific volume). Either you're selecting the wrong volume or that free space is scattered across the volumes in a way that neither of them alone has enough space.

 

[4sallypat]

In Disk Utility, run First Aid - Repair on both containers.

 

[contacos]

I found the issue! It seems like my iCloud Photo Library did not index correctly or whatever. It showed nearly 130 GB of Photo Library even though there are only 3,000 of 120,000 Photos on my device (the rest are in the cloud). I just deactivated iCloud Photos, deleted my Photo Library and now both volumes show the same availability of 180 GB.

Edit: funny, now I enabled iCloud Photos on my Mac again and it says I have 310 GB free in the finder ... umm, my drive is only 256 GB