Deleting huge files, but not freeing up space!?

[casperes1996]

This is super helpful! I want to make sure I'm doing everything accurately (even if it's not necessarily pertinent lol).

I do recall trying the \ method, however, it didn't seem to like it. I just tried the quotes method, and it didn't seem to like that way either. I must still be doing something wrong. The only way I got any sort of helpful result was using the diskutil apfs or ap listSnapshots [disk number: disk1s1 etc]

You're still doing the commands from the root. The drives are not mounted at root /. They're mounted at /Volumes. So a full path to your backup drive would be
"/Volumes/Backup Plus"

You can actually drag paths into the Terminal, so an alternate way would be to just write the command and then drag in the volume from the Finder.

Also some commands you might find useful going forward

ls - Lists everything at the current or specified path. So running ls / will show you what's at your root - ls -a will also show hidden files in the output.

cd - Change directory; Moves around in the Terminal.

So to get a feel for the structure of things you can see

cd /
ls
cd Volumes
ls
cd /dev
ls

Which will, in order:
Go to the root
list what's there.
Go to /Volumes
list what's there.
Go to /dev (devices)
list what's there.

None of this is relevant to your issue, just giving you a better feeling for how commands in the Terminal work. - As to your current issue, it seems pretty strange honestly - doesn't seem like the usual suspects

 

[allan.nyholm]

I hope I'm not making things worse @casperes1996 ? @JoJoBee88 ?

In reality I'm following along to see what's the trouble is all about. ~50MB free storage space?? not good

Also try

sudo mount -uw /

for allowing writing to your drive

Btw.. in macOS Catalina you will also have to put Terminal inside the list of Full Disk Access in the Security and Privacy withing System Preferences.app on your Mac.. you'll be required to unlock System Preferences to be allowed to put in Terminal.app


I also unhid all files using CMD+Shift+. then went to my Macintosh SSD drive and entered the Volumes folder there and there I dragged the drive over... via icon dragging. That led to /Volumes/Macintosh\ SSD

As mentioned above by @casperes1996 - thanks to him. 😃

You can actually drag paths into the Terminal, so an alternate way would be to just write the command and then drag in the volume from the Finder.

Try this instead to get a list of snapshots - worked better for me getting an overview of things.

sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates

to get an overview of things and then use

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

 

[Weaselboy]

I've seen the same sorts of things on my new iMac with OS 10.15. I had 800 GB free, created 200 GB of temporary files, and deleted them. Finder then showed 600 GB free, but About This Mac showed 800. As I created more temp files, the Finder-reported free space count decreased, while About This Mac showed a figure that seemed to be consistent with reality. I never actually ran out of space: With Finder reporting 50 GB free and About This Mac reporting 700, I was able to create a 200 GB file.

A few days later I found that Finder was reporting 1.4 TB free on my 1 TB SSD.

I wrote all this up and logged a bug.

That is normal and part of snapshots. When you delete a file, it is moved over to a snapshot so still uses some disk space. The snapshots are purged after 24 hours, so you should see the space free up on its own.

CCC will let you see them in a GUI. Here is mine from a moment ago.

 

[casperes1996]

I hope I'm not making things worse @casperes1996 ? @JoJoBee88 ?

In reality I'm following along to see what's the trouble is all about. ~50MB free storage space?? not good

Also try

sudo mount -uw /

for allowing writing to your drive

Btw.. in macOS Catalina you will also have to put Terminal inside the list of Full Disk Access in the Security and Privacy withing System Preferences.app on your Mac.. you'll be required to unlock System Preferences to be allowed to put in Terminal.app


I also unhid all files using CMD+Shift+. then went to my Macintosh SSD drive and entered the Volumes folder there and there I dragged the drive over... via icon dragging. That led to /Volumes/Macintosh\ SSD

As mentioned above by @casperes1996 - thanks to him. 😃


Try this instead to get a list of snapshots - worked better for me getting an overview of things.

sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates

to get an overview of things and then use

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

View attachment 961794

You're fine, mate - give all the input you want. Thought mounting with -uw shouldn't make a difference on a running system. The main system drive should already be mounted. - At least the data part, which is the most relevant anyhow.

That is normal and part of snapshots. When you delete a file, it is moved over to a snapshot so still uses some disk space. The snapshots are purged after 24 hours, so you should see the space free up on its own.

CCC will let you see them in a GUI. Here is mine from a moment ago.

Agree that part seems normal, but the fact that neither tmutil n'or diskutil reports back any snapshots seems strange

 

[Weaselboy]

Agree that part seems normal, but the fact that neither tmutil n'or diskutil reports back any snapshots seems strange

I'm wondering if it would be helpful for allan to install the trial version of CCC and select the data volume like in my screenshot just to see if the snapshots show up there?

It won't fix anything, but at least we can tell if snapshots is the real issue here.

 

[casperes1996]

I'm wondering if it would be helpful for allan to install the trial version of CCC and select the data volume like in my screenshot just to see if the snapshots show up there?

It won't fix anything, but at least we can tell if snapshots is the real issue here.

Would be worth a shot, but he says he doesn't even have enough space to install the app, so unless he's got a secondary device to run it off of or a USB drive or something to point the download to, I'm not sure we can get very far with that, but if it's possible for him - definitely try

 

[allan.nyholm]

I'm wondering if it would be helpful for allan to install the trial version of CCC ....

Btw.. just to chime in as there are more than one Allan out there - it's not me.

 

[Nermal]

That is normal and part of snapshots. When you delete a file, it is moved over to a snapshot so still uses some disk space. The snapshots are purged after 24 hours, so you should see the space free up on its own.

I read about that, and it sort-of meshes with what was happening. However, the files were in a directory that was excluded from Time Machine (is that supposed to stop it from snapshotting? The docs were unclear) and it doesn't explain how I ended up with more free space than my SSD's total capacity.

 

[JoJoBee88]

Btw.. just to chime in as there are more than one Allan out there - it's not me.

lol, I think they may have been talking to me maybe?

 

[allan.nyholm]

lol, I think they may have been talking to me maybe?

Oh, yea. You could be right. Nice to meet you, Allan

 

[JoJoBee88]

I hope I'm not making things worse @casperes1996 ? @JoJoBee88 ?

In reality I'm following along to see what's the trouble is all about. ~50MB free storage space?? not good

Also try

sudo mount -uw /

for allowing writing to your drive

Btw.. in macOS Catalina you will also have to put Terminal inside the list of Full Disk Access in the Security and Privacy withing System Preferences.app on your Mac.. you'll be required to unlock System Preferences to be allowed to put in Terminal.app


I also unhid all files using CMD+Shift+. then went to my Macintosh SSD drive and entered the Volumes folder there and there I dragged the drive over... via icon dragging. That led to /Volumes/Macintosh\ SSD

As mentioned above by @casperes1996 - thanks to him. 😃


Try this instead to get a list of snapshots - worked better for me getting an overview of things.

sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates

to get an overview of things and then use

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

View attachment 961794

Sweet! I am loving the drag and drop into terminal. Helps those of us that don't know the syntax very well I'm feeling somewhat confidant I do not have any local snapshots. But I did find a new discovery today, super stoked that I'm making a little progress lol.

I completely shut down my computer last night to give it a solid rest. When I woke up this morning, I had 2 whole GB of space to work with. So I very quickly downloaded DaisyDisk to see if that would give me visibility to other storage hogs of this mystery data. I was able to remove about 20 gb worth of unwanted data directly through Daisy Disk, and it actually moved into my available disk space rather then to the OTHER folder.

In digging through the different folders via Daisy Disk, I found it also did not recognize any local snapshots. But I did find something labeled as "Hidden Space" containing 175.9gb worth of data I don't have access to.

At this point, I've followed up with my company's IT team (They are mostly familiar with Windows issues not mac) to see if they can log in with the higher admin access and verify if they can see what this mystery data is.

I still feel the original issue of files permanently deleted from the trash bin not freeing up available disk space is an issue, but for now I've found a nice work around with Daisy Disk. So grateful!
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Oh, yea. You could be right. Nice to meet you, Allan

Same to you Allan! lol

 

[casperes1996]

I read about that, and it sort-of meshes with what was happening. However, the files were in a directory that was excluded from Time Machine (is that supposed to stop it from snapshotting? The docs were unclear) and it doesn't explain how I ended up with more free space than my SSD's total capacity.

Exceeding max capacity can be explained no other way than "bug", yeah

lol, I think they may have been talking to me maybe?

Definitely you, Allan

 

[J_Haul]

I've recently run into this issue on Catalina with an external drive and stumbled upon an odd solution. I ran the trial version of piece of software called Carbon Copy Cloner, with the thought that I would copy to another drive, wipe my external drive and copy back. Once I started this task I noticed it said that it was "thinning local snapshots". After that step my space seems to have been freed up and I just stopped the rest of the duplication process. Drive has lots of space now and seems to work just fine.

 

[Earl Urley]

Sorry to necro this thread, but say your Mac has been borked so that it refuses to boot even into Safe Mode.. how do you delete snapshots then?

Is it possible to delete local snapshots while booted from an external drive?

 

[zachek]

That is normal and part of snapshots. When you delete a file, it is moved over to a snapshot so still uses some disk space. The snapshots are purged after 24 hours, so you should see the space free up on its own.

CCC will let you see them in a GUI. Here is mine from a moment ago.

Wow. I've been trying to find more information on what's going on with one of my drives for the past 72 hours and I finally stumbled across your comment here and voila, i get the confirmation that it IS snapshots!

In short: a few days ago I deleted about 400GB of files from an old SSD as I've been doing some spring summer cleaning. But the free space never appeared. In researching the problem, I've read a lot about snapshots and suggestions to use the command line to delete local snapshots etc, but couldn't find a concrete way to define where that space went. All that I could see was 400+ GB in Daisy Disk listed as "hidden files" (but apparently not purgeable.) When I drilled down it says:

snapshots: ?
other volumes: 207.8 MB
still hidden: 424.7GB"

TBH, I don't quite understand the snapshot explanation in this case. This drive is a spare drive, installed with a transintl Pro Caddy V (which is also running extremely slow at the moment [10 MB/s according to AmorphousDiskMark] since I moved it down a slot and plugged it into the internal USB 3.0—I suspect this is a problem with the SATA cable and SATA>USB3.0 adapter supplied by Transintl, because I thought I'd read that internal USB port is rated for up to 5Gbps but I digress... I didn't really think that was related.) It is not my boot drive and importantly, it has always been EXCLUDED from Time Machine backups.

But I have and use CCC (I didn't think I was using it with this particular drive [I have no scheduled backup for it] and so I didn't think to take a look at it in this case, but lo and behold I open up the quick menu from the menubar and there is a tab "snapshots" that immediately sheds some light on the subject. Now my question is what is the proper way to purge this?

 

[Boyd01]

Now my question is what is the proper way to purge this?

In Carbon Copy, click the Volumes tab in the left window pane, then click the drive you want. That should list all the snapshows. Right-click the snapshot(s) you want to remove and choose delete from the dropdown menu. I'm sure there are other ways, but this is what I've always used.

 

[NoBoMac]

Can also delete Snapshots from any APFS volume via Disk Utility.

I don't use CCC so not sure what, if anything, would break in CCC if use Disk Utility. But another option.

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

 

[Weaselboy]

Now my question is what is the proper way to purge this?

It should just purge itself after 24 hours.

 

[zachek]

In Carbon Copy, click the Volumes tab in the left window pane, then click the drive you want. That should list all the snapshows. Right-click the snapshot(s) you want to remove and choose delete from the dropdown menu. I'm sure there are other ways, but this is what I've always used.View attachment 2236270

Wow! This worked. Really, really bizarre all around. Especially since CCC was reporting conflicting amounts. When I clicked over from the menubar, the quick menu showed 424 GB in snapshots, as I reported in my last post. But then when I navigated to the full CCC app, after clicking the drive in the sidebar it showed two individual snapshots that were only like 300 mb? When I clicked on one however, it would show 424 GB again (see attached photos.) Hope this helps anyone in the same predicament. Thanks everyone!