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Deleting a home folder

J

James5570

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 25, 2018
5
0
My wife and I share a computer, but she never uses it. The MacBook was filling up and I decided to delete her account to free up some space. I elected to save the home folder, which was my mistake because it did not free up any space on the hard drive. I have searched for a way to go and delete her home folder but nothing is working, I can find it! Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
Hmmmm....

Since you chose to deactivate and archive it -- rather than "delete" it -- is it possible to go back to the Users and Groups pane, and "RE-activate" it? (never tried this myself).

IF this can be done (again, I don't know from experience), what I'd do is:
1. RE-activate it (make it live again)
then
2. Delete it -- this time "for real".

One other thought:
- Download "EasyFind". It's free, download it here:
http://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html
- Open EasyFind, set it up to search for folders, make sure it's set to search for invisible items.
- Search on your wife's name.
- Does anything show up?

Here's an Apple page on deleted users:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25515?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
 
Another thing you could try is DiskInventory X and look for the massive user profile. That app will give you a visualization based on file size so it may be easier to spot.
 
James5570 said:
My wife and I share a computer, but she never uses it. The MacBook was filling up and I decided to delete her account to free up some space. I elected to save the home folder, which was my mistake because it did not free up any space on the hard drive. I have searched for a way to go and delete her home folder but nothing is working, I can find it! Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Click to expand...
Her home folder would have been moved into /Users/Deleted Users.
 
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Thanks everyone for the help!!! I have tried /Users/Deleted Users but it does not find the folder. I have also tried to restore her profile but every time I do it creates a new one and doesn't recognize the old files. When I look at the storage, all the space that was "other users" is now in "system".
 
James5570 said:
Thanks everyone for the help!!! I have tried /Users/Deleted Users but it does not find the folder. I have also tried to restore her profile but every time I do it creates a new one and doesn't recognize the old files. When I look at the storage, all the space that was "other users" is now in "system".
Click to expand...
Ok, so it sounds like you actually deleted the home folder then. In that case, if your computer has an SSD and has been converted to APFS, you won't see the space freed up because the Mac keeps snapshots of your deleted information so you can restore it. This may explain why you aren't seeing more free space.
 
Sorry, I'm not as knowledgeable. Is there a way for me to free up space? I was deleting her from the computer because my computer was filling up.
 
Here are some screenshots of my current storage. Before I removed the account there was an "other users" category. The space that this took up is now in the "system" category.

MTA: the numbers do not add up?
 

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OP:

Download the little (and free) app called DiskWave:
DiskWave Homepage

Then... open it.
You'll see what to do next.
TIP: go to DiskWave preferences and set normally-invisible files to be visible.

DiskWave will show you what's eating up your drive space.

Advisory:
I don't use (and will probably never use) APFS.
I don't know whether DW works properly with APFS or not.
Give it a try. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it shouldn't break anything.
 
I tried Diskwave but still not able to find it. I took a screenshot of Disk Utility. It looks like the free space is there, kinda? Maybe it's "purgeable"
 

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Go Get GrandPerspective its FREE and will solve the issue as to where the file is an you can delete it from the program

http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

once its open go to file and tell it to search the hardrive let it run, you can keep working while its running just try not to move files around as this can skue the data,
what it does: it scans every file in that directory that you selected on the hardrive for size and location then comes back and tells you where your big chunks of memory are, the folder, the size, everything, to change it to a color view open the drawer from the top right of the window once its done and you can select things like bean and stuff hard to remember the choices as im typing this from a win7 pc and I have a mac back at home.
 
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