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Why no extra disc space?

cheddar-caveman

cheddar-caveman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 25, 2012
378
65
Having just bought a very nice Me 15" MacBook Air, I'm having a good clear out.
I noticed my "Download" folder was quite full, in fact it had 9Gb of stuff in it so I decided to clear it.
Before doing so I used Disc Utility to check my available storage and it was 277.77Gb.
I then moved all the stuff from the Download folder to the bin, and emptied the bin.
But the Disc Utility still only shows 277.77Gb free.

Why???
 
I deleted all 9Gb from the Download Folder and then emptied the Bin about ten minutes ago??
 
Most likely APFS snapshots as Howard2k says. Open the Disk Utility app, choose "show all devices" from the View menu. Click on your volume which should be called "Macintosh HD - Data" unless you changed things. Then choose "show APFS snapshots" from the view menu. Currently, mine shows about 20gb. You can delete by selecting it and then clicking the minus button. But you might want to think twice before doing that...


Screen Shot 2024-03-13 at 11.34.31 AM.png
 
About the free space size - Is there any change after a restart?

Just curious--What was your plan when you changed the name of your boot drive to "Data"?
I'm guessing that one of the volumes is named "Data - Data", right?
 
I have no idea about all this. Bought a new MacBook Air and just did a "Migration" from my old MBP to this new one. I haven't done any re naming as I wouldn't know how to do it.
I did notice that very few low the folders on my Desktop contained all the old files, had to physically Airdrop them across before cleaning the MBP.
 
Might be interesting to see a screenshot of your Disk Utility window, with the sidebar in view.
Make sure that "Show All Devices" is selected, under the View menu.
 
And, yes, the Data drive would, in standard use, be named "Macintosh HD - Data"
The system would not modify or delete the Macintosh HD part of the volume name by itself.
And, that might explain why your migration seemed to miss some of the folders that you mentioned in your #7 post.
So, if you did not modify the name, I will assume that you are not the first owner, and the previous owner made that modification before you ever saw your MBAir.

Sorry if I seem to be putting emphasis on that data volume name, but it makes me think that something is not quite right about the laptop. Did you purchase new, direct from Apple?
 
Somethiing does seem different there, but I'm still on Monterey and Intel; new(er) versions of MacOS might be different. From your screenshot, it looks like you need to click on "Data" at the bottom of the list in the sidebar (two levels below what you have selected) in order to see the info on snapshots.
 
This is the DATA screen...........

The OS is Sonoma 14.4

Is this something I should be raising with Apple?

DATA shot.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Sorry, not sure what's going on but I doubt there's anything "wrong" with your computer. See this FAQ about Sonoma and see if you can follow the instructions to show the snapshots like their example. I suppose it's possible that window won't show if it's empty? But that's not the way it works on Monterey, if there are no snapshots the windows is there but it's empty.

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.
support.apple.com
 
I think it's called purgeable space you could force purge with an app called daisydisk or leave it and macos will reclaim that space
daisydisk.jpg


daisydiskapp.com

DaisyDisk, the most popular disk space analyzer

Get a visual breakdown of your disk space in form of an interactive map, reveal the biggest space wasters, and remove them with a simple drag and drop.
daisydiskapp.com daisydiskapp.com
 
You could be looking at 2 different places...

What you deleted could be in your iCloud storage then you checked Disk Utility for local storage free space...

That is what I think you have done which explains why the amount of free space remained the same...
 
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winxmac said:
You could be looking at 2 different places...

What you deleted could be in your iCloud storage then you checked Disk Utility for local storage free space...

That is what I think you have done which explains why the amount of free space remained the same...
Click to expand...
I think that is most likely. I didn't want to use iCloud but was more or less forced into it!
 
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