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disk reported as full in disk utility but not elsewhere

Hello, my mac has been running really slow lately and when I look in disk utility it shows as full (pic 1). However, when I then click on subsequent containers/subfolders in disk utility, it shows 50GB free space (pics 2-5). When I click on 'about this mac' > 'storage', it tells me I have 83GB available (pic 6).


I deleted around 20GB of files/apps, and the storage values reported in disk utility didn't change.


It certainly runs like it's totally full.


What on earth is going on and how do I free up space??


I'm running Big Sur 11.5.2


MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Dec 16, 2021 3:17 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 16, 2021 4:09 PM

Freeze/crashing often is related to lack of RAM. Not "disk memory" but ... CPU memory.


So if you run activity monitor, you can see how much memory you're using, how much is free, how much "pressure" your memory system is under.


Activity monitor summary looks like this:



and you can look at each application to see if one is a hog. But on a good day, Swap Used should be pretty low, and memory used should not be pushing up against the physical memory amount.


My other app shows me a different view (iStat menus):



It shows me that Safari is using a TON of memory and that sucks. When that happens I usually quit the browser and restart it.


Another sign of not enough memory is "page ins and page outs" which as you can see on my brand new laptop are 0! That's because I have 32G of RAM now instead of 16Gb.


So ... I hope this gives you something to think about. If you want, post how much RAM your computer has, what model Mac you have, and maybe even sort your activity monitor by Memory (in the Memory tab) and see which apps are using the most.


Cheers

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 16, 2021 4:09 PM in response to LittleWing23

Freeze/crashing often is related to lack of RAM. Not "disk memory" but ... CPU memory.


So if you run activity monitor, you can see how much memory you're using, how much is free, how much "pressure" your memory system is under.


Activity monitor summary looks like this:



and you can look at each application to see if one is a hog. But on a good day, Swap Used should be pretty low, and memory used should not be pushing up against the physical memory amount.


My other app shows me a different view (iStat menus):



It shows me that Safari is using a TON of memory and that sucks. When that happens I usually quit the browser and restart it.


Another sign of not enough memory is "page ins and page outs" which as you can see on my brand new laptop are 0! That's because I have 32G of RAM now instead of 16Gb.


So ... I hope this gives you something to think about. If you want, post how much RAM your computer has, what model Mac you have, and maybe even sort your activity monitor by Memory (in the Memory tab) and see which apps are using the most.


Cheers

Dec 16, 2021 3:23 PM in response to LittleWing23

Don't worry, your disk isn't full.


You clicked on the top level item and it's displaying the partition map, not a map of how full your hard drive is.


Mine looks the same.


If I click on the Macintosh HD (volumes) item, which is the third one down for me, and I think you, it tells the truth.


If you want to use the Terminal, you can check this way as well:


[Key-Lime-Pie.local:18:22:27::~]


$ df -h .
Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused      ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk3s5  926Gi  309Gi  601Gi    34% 4370805 6298326280    0%   /System/Volumes/Data
[Key-Lime-Pie.local:18:22:35::~]
$ 


disk reported as full in disk utility but not elsewhere

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