So, I got a new iPhone 8+ yesterday (Yay!), I have an iPhone 6 that I am upgrading from. Realizing that I had limited space on the drive to backup the iPhone 6, I started moving quite a bit of stuff onto external drives - also deleted all device backups in iTunes. It shows I have 233GB Free, but Disk Utility shows all of it now a "purgeable space". I still can't backup my iPhone 6 (128GB, half full) due to not enough space on SSD. Sigh.

What am I missing here?


Hardware:
Late 2011 MacBook Pro, 10.13.6
Moved 750GB stock drive into optical bay via OWC hardware
Installed a few years ago an Electra SSD 480GB into the hard drive bay (macOS run from this SSD)
10.12 was already on this drive when upgrading to 10.13


From searching Forum, I found this thread regarding "purgeable space":
[forums.macresource.com]

From the thread, I found these two recommendations:
(1) About this Mac/Storage/Manage…/four options, three of which I would not consider turning on, including "Optimize…" [only thing I had with green check mark was "delete trash older than 30 days"]
(2) Also go to System Preferences/iCloud and make sure iCloud Drive is turned off. [this feature was already turned off]

Searching internet seemed to show some hits with possible issues with 10.13 and third party SSDs.


EDIT: OWC suggested this link to me:
[setapp.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2018 01:02PM by SKYLANE.

Is it as simple as emptying the Trash and then rebooting?

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Ed (modelamac)

I think I will just put an OUT OF ORDER
sticker on my head and call it a day.

modelamac

So, I tried that. After showing me ~233GB of purgeable space (after deleting many files and backups), after reboot, it shows me like ~GB of purgeable space... very odd... OWC thinks this is an Apple issue? Pointed me towards trying an app called "CleanMyMac" - anyone ever use this app?

ref: [setapp.com]

Just tried the Terminal Command listed here:

[discussions.apple.com]


EDIT:

Wow! This appears to have fixed the vast amounts of purgeable space that was being held hostage!

Still don't know what was going on, but sure caused me a lot of stress last night.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2018 01:51PM by SKYLANE.

Thanks for sharing that update!

Quote
SKYLANE
Just tried the Terminal Command listed here:

[discussions.apple.com]


EDIT:

Wow! This appears to have fixed the vast amounts of purgeable space that was being held hostage!

Still don't know what was going on, but sure caused me a lot of stress last night.

That particular problem usually comes from having set up a Time Machine backup and then taken your backup drive offline. The OS will start saving local snapshots as a stop-gap until the drive is accessible again.

Also, it was really bad early on in High Sierra and frequently filled people's drives or choked the Disk Utility during verification for a lot of people until 10.13.5 or 10.13.6, but they finally seem to have most of the bugs out of it by 10.13.6. Are you sure that you've got all of your OS updates installed?

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2018 07:47PM by Sarcany.