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startup disk full...but isnt?

theeicebear

theeicebear

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2015
13
2
Liverpool
For some reason my iMac is saying my startup disk is full, when I have 400gb free on it. I have tried pretty much everything suggest from a Google search, but now I am stumped! Deleted the "caches" folder, turn off Time Machine, rebuilt Spotlight search and so on.

Any help would be appreciated?

Cheers!
 
Download DiskWave from here:
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 volumes and drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any item "on the left".
Now, you'll see what's ON the volume, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.
 
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Fishrrman said:
Download DiskWave from here:
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 volumes and drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any item "on the left".
Now, you'll see what's ON the volume, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.
Click to expand...
But what I am saying is that I have 400gb free of a 1tb HD.

I've attached the screenshot though, in case I'm missing something. Screenshot 2023-11-04 at 14.49.34.png
 
Your hard drive (iMacDaddy) shows 285GB free.
Ok, that's still a fair amount of space, but where do you see that 400GB free, from your first post?
Give DiskWave some time to show all the various folders that are not showing space used, in your screen shot of the DiskWave app.
 
I had same issue and storage under preferences shows 300GB empty but finder shows disk is full. I unchecked settings-> iCloud-> "optimise Mac Storage" and waited few hours. Later checked it back after have got all free space back. Some why purgeable space doesn't free up automatically and even apps refuse to install.
 
My macbook air m1 loses or frees up space ever reboot
this thursday (damned ipad forgot to spell days of the week) a restart eliminated 28 gb.
when these chips were released, :apple: Said the system had unified storage.

meaning dont go too crazy…..
 
theeicebear said:
For some reason my iMac is saying my startup disk is full, when I have 400gb free on it. I have tried pretty much everything suggest from a Google search, but now I am stumped! Deleted the "caches" folder, turn off Time Machine, rebuilt Spotlight search and so on.
Click to expand...
What is saying the startup disk is full? How do you know 400Gb is free?

Turning off TM may be a bad idea as there may well be TM snapshots on your system disk which are not being deleted. Have you looked for the snapshots in Disk Utility?

I don't think DiskWave is good enough. You need something that can scan as an Administrator and understands some of the complexities of APFS - for example DaisyDisk. https://daisydiskapp.com/
 
DeltaMac said:
Your hard drive (iMacDaddy) shows 285GB free.
Ok, that's still a fair amount of space, but where do you see that 400GB free, from your first post?
Give DiskWave some time to show all the various folders that are not showing space used, in your screen shot of the DiskWave app.
Click to expand...
Says it in the Get Info and on the startup HD on desktop. Screenshot 2023-11-05 at 12.10.37.png
 
gilby101 said:
What is saying the startup disk is full? How do you know 400Gb is free?

Turning off TM may be a bad idea as there may well be TM snapshots on your system disk which are not being deleted. Have you looked for the snapshots in Disk Utility?

I don't think DiskWave is good enough. You need something that can scan as an Administrator and understands some of the complexities of APFS - for example DaisyDisk. https://daisydiskapp.com/
Click to expand...
I got bunch of write errors when trying to install app or download files. Errors were something like disk is full and IO error etc.

Disk utility and finder shows all purgeable files as empty space as should but none of apps could use that space.

Only about 10 GB of snapshots were on that folder. Also Time Machine goes stuck when purgeable files were filling the disk. Restart did not help or either any typical first aid tools.
 
You might get some improvement to that storage discrepancy, after updating your Monterey system to the current macOS 12.7.2
 
theeicebear said:
There is 200gb discrepancy
Click to expand...
When I look at your numbers:
Disk Utility: 736+8GB used and 284GB free. 1028Gb Total.
Finder Get Info: 734GB Used, 420 available and 134 purgeable.
From that 284 (free) + 134 (purgeable) = 418 which is very close to 420 (available).
So that looks consistent (and believable).
You have space for adding things.

I come back to: What is showing your disk full?
 
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