Deleted files but hard drive space not reallocated!.

[hippyeverafter]

Hi,

I have a MacBook 12" Early 2016 and recently deleted 334GB of music files after copying them over to an external ssd. Since then I have been unable to get the OS Mojave to release the disk space. Posted the problem on the Apple Community site but everything that was suggested to solve the problem has not helped. This is not the first time I have had this problem but cannot remember how it was solved previously.

 

[objektør]

I am no expert at all and if the Apple Community didn't help, I doubt this will work but did you try to clean your time machine snapshots?
You can run this command in terminal:

sudo tmutil thinLocalSnapshots / 10000000000 4

maybe several times since 334GB is a lot

 

[hippyeverafter]

HI objektor,

Your suggestion did work, Thank you for that.

 

[objektør]

Glad it worked for you too.
Maybe making a new time machine backup would do the trick as well. That should clear the old time machine snapshots.
That's how you probably solved the problem previously now I come to think of it.

 

[Weaselboy]

The OS also purges those snapshots after 24 hours, so odds are if you had done nothing this issue would have fixed itself once 24 hours passed.

 

[Mike Boreham]

The OS also purges those snapshots after 24 hours, so odds are if you had done nothing this issue would have fixed itself once 24 hours passed.

I don't believe the OS purges them, but it does return the space they use to available space to be used if needed. It is then reported by Finder as free. The snapshots are still there. IME Finder is often quicker than 24 hours, but sometimes slower to return the snapshot space to report the snapshot space as free.

Someone who is not on the ball and aware of these issues might easily have gone out and bought more storage, while Finder was trying to make up its mind when to return the snapshots to available space.

Apart from its well known cloning feature CCC is great way of viewing and deleting snapshots and seeing how much space they use.....much easier than the rather slow Terminal commands.

 

[Weaselboy]

I don't believe Finder purges them, but it does return the space they use to available space to be used if needed. The snapshots are still there. IME Finder is often quicker and sometimes slower to return the snapshot space to report the snapshot space as free.

Someone who is not on the ball and aware of these issues might easily have gone out and bought more storage, while Finder was trying to make up its mind when to return the snapshots to available space.

The whole thing is really confusing for users. Like you said, Finder shows the space available, then you look in that Storage tab and it shows the space used, so it is easy to see why people get confused and think something is wrong.

 

[0989382]

Can I just say, this thread is excellent. User has a problem, someone gets back with a solution, then some discussion over macOS and insight into how the OS works. Learnt a lot. Love to see posts like this, forums at their best!