Why is Available plus Used greater than my total disk space?

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Level 1

17 points

Why is Available plus Used greater than my total disk space?

My MacBook Pro has a 1 TB SSD represented by "Macintosh HD". I had approx. 220 GB in my Trash and approx. 235 GB Available in Finder's Get Info, which made sense because I had more than 500 GB of data.

I emptied my Trash. Finder's Get Info is now showing 464.7 GB Available and 796.9 GB of Used. When combined, this is greater than 1 TB, which does not make sense. I don't know why Used didn't go down to approx. 540 GB. Why is it at 796.9 GB?

On Disk Utility, "Container disk1" is showing 15.75 GB for "Macintosh HD" and 781.17 GB for "Macintosh HD - Data".

I had restarted my Mac and it is still showing the same numbers.

My Mac is running Monterrey 12.2.1

MacBook Pro

Posted on Feb 19, 2022 1:53 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

ku4hx

Level 7

23,592 points

Feb 19, 2022 2:06 PM in response to curt0

Every time I delete a large chuck of data, "Purgeable" space increases by that same deleted amount. That space IS available for use and Mac will release it to "normal" empty space sooner or later. This may be what you're seeing.

I use the paid version of DaisyDisk to force the release of Purgeable space. I got it for another reason but it works very well to do this.

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Answer 2

curt0 Author

Level 1

17 points

Feb 19, 2022 6:24 PM in response to ku4hx

@ku4hx Thanks for your reply. My Get Info is showing:

Capacity: 1 TB

Available: 464.27 GB (264.73 GB purgeable)

Used: 797,331,148,800 bytes (797.33 GB on disk)

I want to back up my iPad to my Mac. My iPad is using 315 GB of storage. Can I go ahead and back up? Or, should I wait until the "purgeable" and "Used" spaces decrease?

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Why is Available plus Used greater than my total disk space?

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