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Monterey: disk space is not freed even after deleting very big files

I noticed that my disk is filling up very fast, even though I do not add any files.


I also noticed after deleting files which eat up a lot of disk space, the space is not freed on the disk.


When I run manage disk space I have an ever growing System Data portion.


I tried restart, do a disk repair (in install/repair mode) and safe boot, nothing helps.

What is happening here? (this started on Monterey, other systems behaved liked expected)

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Sep 3, 2022 2:08 PM

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Posted on Sep 3, 2022 2:57 PM

There are times that Spotlight's index doesn't get updated immediately upon a file deletion.


So try the following in order as needed:


1 - How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support  


2 - boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.


NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files



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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 3, 2022 2:57 PM in response to dagmar83

There are times that Spotlight's index doesn't get updated immediately upon a file deletion.


So try the following in order as needed:


1 - How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support  


2 - boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.


NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files



Sep 4, 2022 4:40 PM in response to dagmar83

Not to be insulting, but did you remember to empty the Trash?


Also, deleted items may remain in any APFS snapshots until those snapshots are deleted. Usually these snapshots are made by Time Machine or other backup apps. Once those backups have been transferred to external media, those APFS snapshots will be automatically deleted. See these articles for a bit more information:

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support


https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/reclaiming-drive-space-by-thinning-apple-file-system-snapshot-backups/


Edit: Also, did you make copies of any of these large files on the same internal volume? If so, then due to how the APFS file system works you just deleted a link to the actual data. You must delete every link to that data for the data to be actually deleted.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/everything-you-need-know-about-carbon-copy-cloner-and-apfs#cloning


https://eclecticlight.co/2020/04/14/copy-move-and-clone-files-in-apfs-a-primer/

Sep 5, 2022 2:23 AM in response to HWTech

Thanks so far, did not help unfortunately, after index, reboot and save mode I got 4GB back (although I deleted around 10Gigs and 8Gigs some hours before).

I also just deleted 4GB of Mail Logs and it did not free up any disk space.

I am always more or less empty the trash, when I delete the files, so it wasn´t that. I also did not copy those files, but thanks for the article, which helped me to understand how AFPS works.


I just noticed something. I made a Snapshot in GrandPerspective before deleting the Mail Logs, and after, and it seems, that the Size of the Logs I deleted now went into the Misc-Space (which is the System Data Space), could it be, that it went into a Snapshot? I am using Carbon Copy Cloner, but there I only see Snapshots on the internal disk from when I made a backup on my external disk, and it says it has 299Gig of Snapshots, but in the list there is only a little bit more than 200Gigs of Snapshots

Sep 7, 2022 6:53 PM in response to dagmar83

dagmar83 wrote:

What is happening here? (this started on Monterey, other systems behaved liked expected)

I think you must not have noticed the problem before, or you had more free disk space before. This has been normal behaviour for a few years.


You aren’t actually allowed to delete files anymore. All you really do is flag them for deletion. They will be saved in a local snapshot until local snapshots are purged. This should happen within 1-2 days. I recommend keeping 100 GB of free space to avoid problems. Note that I said “free” space. Your “available” storage doesn’t mean squat.

Monterey: disk space is not freed even after deleting very big files

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