So, I am using a 2014 Mac Mini with an internal 250GB SSD that contains the OS and other standard files. I also have an internal 1TB spinner that hold all of my work files, music, movies, etc. Big Sur 11.6.

I'm running out of room on the SSD even though I store very little extra on it. I went to About this Mac and noticed there was 140GB listed as "other", not apps, music, movies, etc. I trashed about 20GB of stuff on the SSD that I no longer need. Emptied the trash. Nothing. The Finder says I now have about 5GB less room available that before I trashed those files. Additionally the "Other" category has grown by about 10GB.

What in the world is going on? What happened to the good old days that when you trashed stuff it freed up storage space. I've restarted, signed out of my account and everything else I can think of but no good. Like I said, after trashing a bunch of stuff, I now have less space available than when I started.

I did some searching and others talking about the problem. Their solution is to back up, nuke the drive and start over again. Anyone want to weigh in on this? Would be much appreciated.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2021 12:49PM by celliott.

Safe Boot and restart:

[support.apple.com]


Possibly related:

“ Time Machine stores snapshots of your drive to assist with its next backup. You can temporarily clear out these Time Machine snapshots to solve the issue. Follow the steps below to remove your Time Machine backups “

[www.digitaltrends.com]

(Ignore references to installing Big Sur)

In the old days, with spinning platters, you'd have to occasionally defragment the drive. At least you did on Windows. There were apps for OS X that did some maintenance routines that were similar. ONYX is one that sticks in my mind.

[www.titanium-software.fr]

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MacResource User Map: [www.zeemaps.com]#

celliott,

First thing is that the Finder, About This Mac, iCloud, and Disk Utility will each give you different numbers about your storage capacity. DU is probably closer to the truth than the others.

Second thing is that you should probably reboot to get updated info about your storage.

I like Omnidisksweeper because it gives you (in list form) the size of every folder and subfolder on your drive, in descending order. This makes it easy to zero in on the biggest consumers of harddrive space - where you can make the most effective changes.

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Ed (modelamac)

Trying to figure out some people is like trying to smell the number 9.

Id do a pram reset. shut down, unplug from wall (or back of mini), wait 30 seconds, plug in, restart.

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

Disk Inventory X is another good tool. It will provide a graphical display of the disk usage showing relative file size. You can delete files and review things that are taking up more space than you're aware of. It's useful for finding big files hiding in plain sight.

[www.derlien.com]

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MacResource User Map: [www.zeemaps.com]#

Quote
ztirffritz
Disk Inventory X is another good tool. It will provide a graphical display of the disk usage showing relative file size. You can delete files and review things that are taking up more space than you're aware of. It's useful for finding big files hiding in plain sight.

[www.derlien.com]

[www.derlien.com]

Did JJ Abrams do the graphics for that?

I see two reasons for stuff like that.

1. Yes, Time Machine's local snapshots can hold onto the disk space from files that you've deleted. Run this in the Terminal:

sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000000 4

2. If you have iCloud managing your disk space via "Optimize Mac Storage" then it will move your files into the cloud when you're running low on disk space and will fill your drive again with those files as you free disk space. If this is the case, DO NOT JUST DISABLE "Optimize Mac Storage" as it will then try to dump all of those files back onto your drive and can completely fill your drive and hose your disk. First, try and figure out how much space you're using in iCloud, then free up that much space on your drive by deleting files from your drive, THEN disable "Optimize Mac Storage."

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Sarcany, I guess I should have asked what the terminal command does before running it. But I did run it and the disk space went from 34GB to 118GB. So I recaptured some significant disk space. Now can you tell me what the command did?

Actually I researched it. Designed to remove local snapshots left by TimeMachine.

Thanks for the help.