Resolved No disk space

[glen.whitehead]

Resolved: Could not restore the Macintosh data to external SSD . Instead, booted in safe mode and copied data folders across manually.

Hi all,

My MacBook Air (2014) 16Gb/256Gb has thrown its toys out of the pram.

It threw out of memory errors at the same time as out of disk storage errors, possibly due to swap memory.

I tried to free up disk space: In settings I removed an unused account and associated files, but that account lingers. I tried to delete files but it could not. I tried to rename a folder ahead of copying it to a backup, but my Mac has insufficient free space to perform that action!

I attached an external SSD to drag files across, but MacOS cannot mount the disk. Online trouble shooting guides suggested rebooting MacOS to reset system memory, upon which I discovered my Mac cannot even restart!

MacOS did however logout. The login screen is how I discovered the deleted user account has not fully deleted. I tried to login to my account and Finder has has now not loaded: It is stuck with a spinning pointer and no Dock!

I’m open to suggestions..

 

[Shirasaki]

One of the many nuances of file system is if the disk is too full, you can’t even create a folder. I dunno how full your Mac is currently, but you might consider looking up tutorials on how to use external drive and recovery mode to backup files in terminal. Please note that this is just a theory and might not work.

 

[glen.whitehead]

Thank you. I was doing as you suggested and ran into some issues using the Restore feature in Disk Utilities: Errors from volumes being locked, but not encrypted. I more simply copied the top level data folders across (Desktop, Documents, etc.) When I have verified all the important stuff is safely accessible on another machine then I will factory reset the internal drive and maybe get another 10 years out of it!