Imac disk space problem

[Daniel Marchant]

Hello, i am trying to figure out what is causing this persisten problem with my disk space since is not even close to full with around 80 gb of free space, but one or twice a day i get the notification of my disk being full, and it is full of a ghost volume that i cannot get rid of, if i wait long enough it just goes away at some point, it also goes away when i reboot.

Please give me a hand with this, i am out of ideas and this problem is becoming too persistent to just let it stay.

My Imac setup

Some extra information, i don't usually turn off my imac just let it go to sleep mode overnight.
I have the exact same programs and build on 2 other laptops one with 512gb and the other with 256gb, and none of them have this problem, as expected i also don't turn off any of those at all and just close the lid, unless i need a reboot.

This screenshot was taken after a while of just watching youtube today for a while and then suddenly got the message about disk space again.

I had this problem when i updated to catalina, and thinking it was Catalinas fault i went back to High Sierra with a install from scratch, but the issue is still there.

Hope someone can give me some guidance.
Cheers

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Do you use Time Machine for backups? Sometimes this can store data and use up hard drive space. For mine Carbon Copy or SuoperDuper cloning mprograms are the go.

 

[Daniel Marchant]

Do you use Time Machine for backups? Sometimes this can store data and use up hard drive space. For mine Carbon Copy or SuoperDuper cloning mprograms are the go.

I do but this happened before time machine was even activated.

 

[TwoH]

I'm wondering if this has something to do with APFS? I feel kind of stumped on this to be fair..

 

[elite953]

You can also check purgeable data first and remove it if possible.

"Purgeable Disk Space is a “feature” of more recent versions of OSX. It is storage on your hard drive that the operating system sets aside for files that it thinks you might access again in the future."

 

[Fishrrman]

Download DiskWave from here:

DiskWave Homepage

It's small in size and free.

Open DiskWave and go to the preferences.
Put a checkmark in "show invisible files".
Close preferences.

The DiskWave window shows you all your drives, folders, etc.
Click on any drive.
Now, you'll see what's ON the drive, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.