OTHER folder increasing when permanently removing files from trash. No disk space.

[JoJoBee88]

I have a macbook Pro 2017 on macOS Catalina Version 10.15.5. It has 250gb of disk space, but only shows less than 1gb of free space. It shows 226gb in the "other" category under System Storage. The odd thing is, whenever I permanently delete items from the trash, I do not regain free space, and the "Other" category increases in that amount (like the files aren't actually being deleted, but moved somewhere else).

I was excited to see that local snapshots seemed to be the culprit for most folks, however, I'm not finding any stored local snapshots on my computer to delete which is incredibly disappointing.

The other detail that I think plays a big factor with my issue, I have a 2TB portable backup drive I use with TimeMachine. I purchased this drive because my computer was acting up, so I can' t say for sure if this particular issue (other folder increasing with any permanent removal of files from trash) came before or after bringing the portable hardrive into the picture.

I saw a lot of talk about CCC and how in some cases it actually restored some free space for some people. The problem I'm facing is, I can't install any new applications because my free space is practically nothing. I can't even keep my outlook app open (requires 150mb).

There's a whole lot more steps I took to resolve this issue that I have not included to spare you the detail, but feel free to ask and I'm happy to share.

I'm to a point of just wiping it and attempting a fresh restore, but would love to hear any other suggestions if a restore isn't necessary.

This previous thread had some helpful info, but didn't quite get me where I needed: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/deleting-huge-files-but-not-freeing-up-space.2135033/


jojobee88:~ jojobee88$ df -H
/dev/disk1s5 251G 11G 81M 100% 487499 2447613821 0% /
devfs 348k 348k 0B 100% 1176 0 100% /dev
/dev/disk1s1 251G 238G 81M 100% 2282307 2445819013 0% /System/Volumes/Data
/dev/disk1s4 251G 1.1G 81M 94% 2 2448101318 0% /private/var/vm
map auto_home 0B 0B 0B 100% 0 0 100% /System/Volumes/Data/home
map -fstab 0B 0B 0B 100% 0 0 100% /System/Volumes/Data/Network/Servers


jojobee88:~ jojobee88$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *251.0 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 250.7 GB disk0s2/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +250.7 GB disk1
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data 237.6 GB disk1s1
2: APFS Volume Preboot 84.0 MB disk1s2
3: APFS Volume Recovery 528.5 MB disk1s3
4: APFS Volume VM 1.1 GB disk1s4
5: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 11.2 GB disk1s5/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS Backup Plus 2.0 TB disk2s2

 

[brianmowrey]

Oof. Have you done First Aid in Disk Utility, including going to All Devices view and checking all nested volumes as well as the drive itself? Catalina has resized the Data volume to totally box in the primary volume.

It could be Tm. The reason I don’t like Tm is the only way to isolate the cause of disk/library issues against being caused by Tm is not to use Tm in the first place. But don’t do what I did five years ago, and wipe the Tm drive so you could try to switch to a hard backup only to lose everything at exactly that moment...

 

[HDFan]

If you can install a program such as DaisyDisk that can give you a few places to look. It has a category it calls "hiddenspace", which in my case is ~135 GB.

To get space enough to install try looking at:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync I have 1.3 TB there.
/Library/Application Support

Try doing a safe boot. That can clear out caches.

Once you have enough space to install CCC make a clone of your disk. Do not rely on TM as your only backup - it is unreliable.

When you get control of things you need to keep 20% of your disk free. Implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy.