Diskspace on external SSD not releasing

[jz0309]

M1Max Studio and a USB-C connected Sandisk Extreme 2 TB (~ 5 years old) running latest released Tahoe.
SSD only gets detached when moving the Studio, I never have seen it "disconnecting" over that past several years, rock-solid.

I have my media library on that external drive and it's been getting very full (1.93TB) so I went and deleted ~ 150GB using Finder (move to Trash). I have emptied the Trash multiple times, it's empty.
the SSD still shows that ~1.93YB is being used, using GetInfo reveals that the folder contain ~ 1.75TB of data.
For all I know there are no hidden files on that SSD
DiskUtility shows 1.93TB is being used
I rebooted a couple times, unplugged the SSD to no change.
I plugged the SSD into my Neo, same result.

Any suggestions on how to regain that disk space?
I do have backups, so my last straw is to reformat the drive and restore from backup

 

[DeltaMac]

Turn on hidden files, just to make sure that hidden files are using that space.
You can turn on your hidden files by pressing Shift-Command- (period).
After checking for hidden files, you can press the same keys again to re-hide those files (if you need to do that)

 

[jz0309]

Turn on hidden files, just to make sure that hidden files are using that space.
You can turn on your hidden files by pressing Shift-Command- (period).
After checking for hidden files, you can press the same keys again to re-hide those files (if you need to do that)

Thanks, thought I did that but must have used the wrong key combination ;(

Anyways, there are 4 hidden folders in the root of the SSD containing ~ 12.5MB of data

 

[Boppi]

You've hit the 5 year mark for a model that's had a history of failure. That's a good run for any SSD. I would consider replacing it sooner rather than later.

An aging SSD that won't delete files successfully can be caused by failing sectors. The drive is trying to write/verify the deletion and is hitting a bad block(s), which can result in an unsuccessful deletion.

Try Disk Utility's First Aid but only after you've backed it up, as running repair tools on an already struggling drive could accelerate failure.

 

[jz0309]

You've hit the 5 year mark for a model that's had a history of failure. That's a good run for any SSD. I would consider replacing it sooner rather than later.

An aging SSD that won't delete files successfully can be caused by failing sectors. The drive is trying to write/verify the deletion and is hitting a bad block(s), which can result in an unsuccessful deletion.

Try Disk Utility's First Aid but only after you've backed it up, as running repair tools on an already struggling drive could accelerate failure.

I didn't mention in my original post that I did run first aid and no issues reported.

And yes, there was a model of that SSD that had issues but I never ran into any, it had Ben 100% reliable over the years with the exception that I'm dealing with right now.
I copied the files to another drive after which I deleted them.

 

[blufrog]

Are you sure the files are occupying space? Disk Management is the source of truth on real disk usage (as far as I can tell).

Finder has weird (but perfectly explainable) ways of accounting for disk usage that is different to Disk Management – I got burned by this when trying to account for TM backup space used as I had put two volumes on the same disk (APFS) and Finder was making it appear the TM backups were occupying 1 TB of space when they are not; DM showed it was only using 70 GB.

It could be that the files are marked "deleted" but won't actually get flushed until that space is required by something else. The parameter you want to look for in DM is "Purgeable".

 

[blufrog]

Are you using iCloud, and is "optimize disk space" enabled? Apparently this can cause this behavior, too.

 

[eyoungren]

Any suggestions on how to regain that disk space?

Stuff like that irritates me because the OS is not bending to my will. Usually what I do when something like that happens is copy off all the data to a temporary folder on another drive. Use Disk Utility to reformat the drive. That'll wipe everything. Then copy all the data from the temporary folder back on to the drive you had it on and delete the temporary folder.

Usually solves the problem for me.

 

[jz0309]

Stuff like that irritates me because the OS is not bending to my will. Usually what I do when something like that happens is copy off all the data to a temporary folder on another drive. Use Disk Utility to reformat the drive. That'll wipe everything. Then copy all the data from the temporary folder back on to the drive you had it on and delete the temporary folder.

Usually solves the problem for me.

Yea, was thinking that.
I'm using Apple TV/Music so I cannot "just" copy/re-copy, need to ensure the library integrity and need to delve into that some more. I do have CCC backups so might just use those.

 

[eyoungren]

Yea, was thinking that.
I'm using Apple TV/Music so I cannot "just" copy/re-copy, need to ensure the library integrity and need to delve into that some more. I do have CCC backups so might just use those.

Oh yeah, I get that. One of the reasons I moved on to a different music player at a certain point. Good luck!

 

[chrfr]

Yea, was thinking that.
I'm using Apple TV/Music so I cannot "just" copy/re-copy, need to ensure the library integrity and need to delve into that some more. I do have CCC backups so might just use those.

It is almost surely local snapshots on the disk that are using that space. (CCC can create them too.) You can view them in Disk Utility once you turn on the option to show local snapshots.

 

[Ben J.]

M1Max Studio and a USB-C connected Sandisk Extreme 2 TB (~ 5 years old) running latest released Tahoe.
SSD only gets detached when moving the Studio, I never have seen it "disconnecting" over that past several years, rock-solid.

I have my media library on that external drive and it's been getting very full (1.93TB) so I went and deleted ~ 150GB using Finder (move to Trash). I have emptied the Trash multiple times, it's empty.
the SSD still shows that ~1.93YB is being used, using GetInfo reveals that the folder contain ~ 1.75TB of data.
For all I know there are no hidden files on that SSD
DiskUtility shows 1.93TB is being used
I rebooted a couple times, unplugged the SSD to no change.
I plugged the SSD into my Neo, same result.

Any suggestions on how to regain that disk space?
I do have backups, so my last straw is to reformat the drive and restore from backup

It might be that the drive has lots of snapshots. In Disk Utilities, select the external drive, enable 'Show snapshots' and you'll be able to select one or more snapshots and delete them. The space used by those snapshots will be available again immediately.

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on Mac, view a list of APFS snapshots, copy information about the snapshots, and delete them.

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