Picture storage issue

[Caliguy26]

Hi guys! I have a question that has been bothering me for the past month. I have a Macbook Air and it has alerted me that my storage is completely full. So I went through and deleted the thousands of photos I had stored on the computer, and then emptied the trash thinking that would do the trick since they took up 68 GB of space according to the storage section of about this mac.

I restarted my computer, it said it was taking up the same amount of storage. I even deleted iPhoto the app, thinking maybe somehow the photos were being stored on there even though I never used it.

What could this be? I don't understand how I could delete all of the photos and yet it says they are still taking up 68 GBs. It doesn't make any sense. They were all in a folder and I went through and dragged groups of them to the trash as I would anything else I trash.

Thanks!

 

[ftaok]

Did you empty the trash?

Whoops, I read right over the part where you said you emptied the trash.

OK, in iPhoto and in the Photos app, there's a separate trash can. Try deleting the photo in the app and emptying the app's trash.

 

[Weaselboy]

I restarted my computer, it said it was taking up the same amount of storage.

It sounds like you have Time Machine turned on. What that does is when you empty the trash the files don't really get deleted, but they get moved to a hidden /.MobileBackups folder and stay there until the disk gets close to 80% full. Then the OS will start to purge the files off to make room.

This space is not reported in Finder, but is reported in the storage report. If you look in Finder you should see the free space you expect.

More info here.

If you run the command below in Terminal it will show how much space that folder is using.

sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups

If you turn Time Machine off briefly then back on, it will erase that space. Or you can just ignore it and let the OS manage it.