Deleting Files Doesn't Free Up Space

[barnes8766]

I upgraded to High Sierra recently and noticed my hard drive was close to full (6gigs available). I moved about about 30 gigs in my trash and emptied but no space has been reclaimed. The files I trashed are gone and aren't hidden either. It's a very strange and problematic issue because my OS disk will be out of space soon. I ordered a Sata to usb adapter so I plan to hook the drive up to my laptop and see if I can make space by deleting files from the laptop. Hopefully it works and if anyone has an idea of what the issue is please let me know.

 

[vulgo]

If you are using APFS this could be explained by snapshots existing on the filesystem. They are manageable via the time machine system command 'tmutil' and the 'apfs' diskutil subcommand.

 

[barnes8766]

My drive is APFS format. When I type in (tmutil listlocalsnapshots /) in the terminal this comes up.
com.bombich.ccc.98F9EF03-D24C-42D3-A4C9-A57C9378AB9B.2018-05-06-212528

I am not sure what I am doing here so please advise what to do next.

 

[barnes8766]

I discovered com.bombich.ccc.98F9EF03-D24C-42D3-A4C9-A57C9378AB9B.2018-05-06-212528 is from a Carbon Copy Clone I did a few days ago. Time machine snapshots I don't believe are the issue. A couple other things I have tried.

Ran disk utility repair and everything was fine. No errors.

Ran Daisy Disk and it showed I had 100 gigs of Still Hidden items but can't locate the files. I added up the size of all the folders and hidden folders on my OS disk and they don't add up to what the system is saying is there. I have no idea where the 100 gigs is that Daisy Disk discovered.

I am really hoping to not do a clean install again. Especially now all my programs have been loaded and working for months since upgrading to High Sierra.

 

[vulgo]

I discovered com.bombich.ccc.98F9EF03-D24C-42D3-A4C9-A57C9378AB9B.2018-05-06-212528 is from a Carbon Copy Clone I did a few days ago. Time machine snapshots I don't believe are the issue. A couple other things I have tried.

You can believe what you like but space will not be freed when there are local snapshot(s) of what you are deleting. APFS works very differently to HFS+, it is always storing the changes - copying or deleting files in the now may not effect available space if something already exists or is captured by a snapshot (the data is still there and you cannot overwrite it and it is still taking up space, but only once).

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

com.bombich.ccc.98F9EF03-D24C-42D3-A4C9-A57C9378AB9B.2018-05-06-212528

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2018-05-06-212528

Deleted local snapshot '2018-05-06-212528'

Then you can create a new snapshot using Apple's or Bombich's interface(s) if you want to (it takes no time and takes up no additional space).

tmutil localsnapshot

Created local snapshot with date: 2018-05-??-??????

Also the size of APFS volumes is not fixed. See 'diskutil apfs info'

 

[barnes8766]

I believe I already tried this by following instructions on a website. I will try it again when I get home.

 

[barnes8766]

Deleting the local snapshot in the terminal did not clear any space on my drive. Any other suggestions?

 

[vulgo]

Any other suggestions?

What's the output from 'diskutil apfs list'?

If there are no local snapshots listed in the output from (disk... = device name of the APFS volume e.g. named Macintosh HD = e.g. disk1s1)

diskutil apfs listsnapshots disk...

and the 'capacity in use by volumes' (for the container) is being reported incorrectly you could run Disk Utility -> Fist Aid from recovery or 'fsck_apfs /dev/disk...' also from recovery.

 

[barnes8766]

I did not enter 'diskutil apfs list' in the terminal. I will do so when I get home. I tried booting in recovery mode but it took for ever to load from the Apple logo and when it finally did I got a spinning wheel so that's another can of worms. I read by putting FakeSMC.kext in your EFI partition in /EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other works but I can't find the FakeSMS.kext. Any suggestions of how to get into my recovery partition will be helpful.

 

[vulgo]

I can't find the FakeSMS.kext. Any suggestions of how to get into my recovery partition will be helpful

It's available in the downloads section from the main navigation of this forum. And if you show hidden Finder files you'll likely find it installed in /Library/Extensions on your root disk.