Deleted files but disk available stays the same

[duncanwil]

Dear All,

I am doing a bit of tidying up. I have been manually copying and deleting files as I transfer across to an external hard drive. However, despite having seemingly deleted many Gb of files, the total disk space available accruing to Disk Utility has remained almost static.

I have emptied the Trash as I have been going along too.

I rebooted, closed and opened the disk utility as I tried to reset the space available value but it's not shifting.

Any advice>

TIA

Duncan

 

[maflynn]

Download and use OmniDiskSweeper. It will provide a sorted list of what's consuming your space.

Another option which is more comprehensive is to use this terminal command
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

I prefer to redirect it to a text file (this puts it in your Documents folder
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g / > ~/Documents/du.txt

Also consider turning off local snapshots - if you use Time Machine

You need to do this in the terminal
sudo tmutil disablelocal

 

[duncanwil]

I got this ...

Thanks Mike,

I ran your terminal routine and got this:

1 /.DocumentRevisions-V100
1 /.fseventsd
53 /.MobileBackups
2 /.Spotlight-V100
0 /.Trashes
0 /.vol
28 /Applications
1 /bin
0 /cores
1 /dev
1 /home
5 /Library
1 /net
0 /Network
9 /private
1 /sbin
7 /System
40 /Users
1 /usr
1 /Volumes
141 /
141 total

40 users??

What does this list tell me?

----------

I just ran CleanMyMac2 and it found around 2Gb of things to delete.

I deleted what it said and I can see that Disk Utility shows the 2 Gb as available now.

 

[Weaselboy]

53 /.MobileBackups

Here is your issue. When you have Time Machine turned on and delete files, they don't really get deleted but go into this hidden /.MobileBackups folder. It is described here.

Just turn Time Machine off then on again and the space will be erased.

You can run this command before and after to see the result.

sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

 

[duncanwil]

Solved

That's magic, weasel boy ... it worked a treat.

Did what you said, turned off the time machine setting, then turned it back on and got 30 Gb more available!!

Huge thanks.

 

[Weaselboy]

That's magic, weasel boy ... it worked a treat.

Did what you said, turned off the time machine setting, then turned it back on and got 30 Gb more available!!

Huge thanks.

I missed your earlier question about 40 /Users. This numbers to the left show file size in GB in each folder. So this tells you there is a total of 40GB in the /Users folders.

 

[duncanwil]

thanks again, appreciated