SSD unable to delete

Question

SSD unable to delete

I have a Samsung T7 1TB SSD formatted as APFS. Disk Utility shows that it has only a few GB free. However I have deleted over 200GB from the SSD, and Disk Utility still shows that only the same few GB are free. I have run First Aid on Disk Utility and it has checked 74 snapshots as being OK and indicates the SSD is OK.

While USED is showing 996GB, and FREE is 4GB, there is another grey-coloured category called OTHER VOLUMES showing over 200GB which does not appear on the horizontal bar chart. However the actual files on the SSD as shown in the Finder total only about 800GB; thus the free space seems to match this 200GB. I did try to add further files to the SSD and was told the SSD was full.

Why can I no longer seem to be able to delete files from this SSD?

Mac Studio, macOS 13.4

Posted on Jul 24, 2023 11:11 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 25, 2023 04:34 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks Barney

I have left the encrypted SSD mounted all night, and there is absolutely no change in the free space indicated: 4GB. So there is no garbage collection operating. Is it possible the 74 snapshots are taking up the space which should be available? However there is no access or way of removing them that I can see.

Since no further files can be added to the SSD, it is essentially useless unless I save the entire 1TB of files and then reformat it, which I am loath to do unless absolutely necessary. Is this a common problem with SSD?

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Answer 2

Owl-53

Level 10

100,213 points

Jul 26, 2023 02:59 AM in response to Darrall Cutting

Building on @Matti Haveri posting..

Notation - If the user is using a cloning software like Carbon Copy Cloner - suggest tweaking the Safety Net Feature in this software.

It may be making additional Snap Shots that are not being Cloned to the Eternal Drive. If this should be the case, these Snap Shot could be using additional space on the drive

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Answer 3

Jul 26, 2023 11:01 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks everyone for your comments.

I have now checked that all my snapshots were created by Carbon Copy Cloner. The Safety Net feature was not causing the problem. The backup snapshots are stored on the destination volume; the older ones can be safely deleted if storage becomes a problem, though auto-culling is configurable. My problem was that I had also set up the source volume for snapshots as well, and these had accumulated without my realising it. Since the source volume is automatically backed up regularly, these source backups aren't necessary, and deleting them restored my SSD capacity.

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Answer 4

Jul 26, 2023 01:44 AM in response to Darrall Cutting

> DU does not give any way to access the snapshots

Not via Disk Utility > View > Show APFS Snapshots?

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,238 points

Jul 25, 2023 03:30 AM in response to Darrall Cutting

When you delete files, the storage locations have to be reset to be writeable again during the drive’s garbage collection routine. That may take a while when you have so little free space remaining.

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