Incorrect Available Free Space Reporting After Deleting Files in SSD NVMe Drive

[LeonPro]

I have a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB in a PCIe slot that I use for video editing. I deleted at least 500GB of media, but both Finder and Disk Utility are in sync in reporting only 111.88GB free space when it should not have over 850GB of available space.

I checked each folder in the drive with Get Info and it is correctly reporting the files and usage. But overall free space is as per reported above.

Anything I missed? There is no Trash to delete. I already unmounted, remounted, restarted, shut down, First Aid repair.

 

[DeltaMac]

Check for hidden files on that volume.
Press Shift-Command-. (period), which will make your usual hidden files and folders immediately visible. (Same keys will turn that off). You might discover that there are hidden files/folders on that drive.

 

[LeonPro]

Check for hidden files on that volume.
Press Shift-Command-. (period), which will make your usual hidden files and folders immediately visible. (Same keys will turn that off). You might discover that there are hidden files/folders on that drive.

Thanks for tip. I just checked and the most within the hidden folders is 657KB. Everything else is 0KB including the .Trashes folder.

I also did a Spotlight rebuild on that same drive. Still reporting not much free space. I'm at a loss.

My last resort is to move the existing files, reformat, then move back. But I'd like to figure out how to properly solve this.

 

[kohlson]

Try something like Disk Inventory X to visualize what's there. I use this once in awhile when I can seem to determine what's clogging up my drives.

 

[jdiamond]

Or OmniDiskSweeper. One thing - you didn't by chance install the Samsung encryption software? Because that's not Mac compatible and can lead to all kinds of issues. (I have dozens of 970 Evos that I happily use but without encryption and without installing the Samsung drivers.)

 

[LeonPro]

Thanks all for replies.

Or OmniDiskSweeper. One thing - you didn't by chance install the Samsung encryption software? Because that's not Mac compatible and can lead to all kinds of issues. (I have dozens of 970 Evos that I happily use but without encryption and without installing the Samsung drivers.)

No installation of software or drivers from Samsung. It was a straight install from the packaging to the PCIe card and reformatted in Catalina for APFS.

I've also spoken to Apple Support and they have escalated to Engineering to take a look at what may be going on. Will update if I hear something back from them.

 

[kohlson]

I've also spoken to Apple Support

I miss those days, when as the owner of a flagship system you would call Apple and they would get engineering right on it!

 

[LeonPro]

Update: After further tinkering with similar posts in forums I found out it's Carbon Copy Cloner that creates Snapshots. I turned it off, then deleted the snapshots, then back on.

After a few minutes I now have 860GB of free space as expected. It's mysterious as I don't even see the snapshot files despite revealing hidden folders.

Anyway, FYI in case someone runs into similar issues and has CCC app running.

Thanks all for chiming in.

 

[stevenaaus]

Hmmm - the snapshot seems like another brain-dead/wrongly implemented feature of APFS ?
Restoring old files is the purpose of Time Machine.... though probably it is the fault of CCC to enable this (by default ?).

Leveraging Snapshots on APFS Volumes | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

What is a snapshot?

Snapshots are a new feature of Apple's APFS filesystem, and they're available on macOS High Sierra and later. A snapshot is a point-in-time representation of a volume on your hard drive. Once the snapshot is taken, each file within that snapshot will be available on the snapshot in its exact state at the moment that the snapshot was taken, even if you delete the file. When you configure CCC to make regular snapshots of your APFS-formatted volumes, you can quickly restore older versions of your files. When you combine snapshots and CCC bootable backups, you can even restore an older version of your Mac's operating system!


Note: Snapshots are only available for APFS-formatted volumes on macOS High Sierra and later.

 

[Nermal]

I'm having the same issue on my new iMac, which is my first OS 10.15 machine. Finder is reporting 80 GB free on a 1 TB SSD, OmniDiskSweeper is listing 300 GB used (which sounds about right) and About This Mac/Storage is listing 700 GB free.

I'd concluded that Finder was reporting the wrong figure and have been using About This Mac, but I just had FFmpeg abort due to running out of space. At the same time, a couple of other apps started misbehaving/crashing so it seems that all the space was indeed used up.

However... I do not have CCC installed, so that can't be the issue! Some poking around indicated that it might be related to Time Machine (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015) but it says that snapshots are automatically deleted when space is needed... and my FFmpeg intermediate files were all in a folder that was excluded from Time Machine in the first place.

Does anyone have any ideas about what's going on here?

Edit: Two hours later, Finder is reporting a figure that looks about right. What's going on here?!

 

[kohlson]

What's going on here?

I don't know what going on, but something very similar happened to me last week. 10.14.6 on late-2013 15-MBP with 1TB. Last week I checked and found I had 93G free. Spent some time to clear out some things, and deleted 250GB. Emptied the trash several times. While the Funder "space available" seemed to report correctly, the space used was still over 900GB. After a couple of days everything settled on the right numbers. Dunno why.

 

[Nermal]

Now Finder is listing 1.24 TB available on my 1 TB machine!

 

[Boyd01]

I noticed the same kind of thing a few days ago after deleting a 250gb disk image from the internal 2tb SSD on my 2018 Mini (10.15.4) and emptying the trash. "Get info" did not appear to be reflecting the additional free space. I shrugged it off, assuming that I did not correctly recall the amount of free space before deleting the file.

 

[Taz Mangus]

What is confusing is what is reported as available space in Disk Utility, Finder and System Information don't always lineup.

 

[choreo]

Seen the same behavior on my Internal Samsung SSD on PCI card and CCC.

 

[evbartl]

Thanks! Had the same issue, and this thread put me on the trail of the solution!