I have a base model MacBook Pro with M1 and 256gib of storage. I tried macOS Ventura and it was fine, but I didn't like it much so I reverted to Monterey by adding a partition and installing it here. Today I wanted to remove the old partitions but they couldn’t unmount and begone. What should I do?

Restoring my iPhone backup ate about 30 GB of hard drive space. I had to keep up with it deleting files the whole time it was running. Not much fun. I'm guessing it extracted a bunch of files somewhere. I want to get rid of these files while still having my iPhone backups. It doesn't seem normal that iTunes wouldn't clean up after itself but oh well. -- Edit -- The first time I tried the restore process it ate about 10GB and I never recovered that after it failed.

I am trying to figure out how to free up space on a 2TB SSD that only has about 1.1TB of legitimate usage, but says its completely full. The disk has two APSF volumes on it, one taking up 1.8Tb (per Disk Utility) and the other taking 194GB. When I total up everything in the larger volume, it appears that it should only be taking up about 1.1TB. The smoking gun that I see is this info coming from Daisy Disk: I recognize the space taken by the two snapshots. These numbers match what I see in Carbon Copy Cloner, the tool that created those snapshots. Why does the total space used by snapshots not equal 46.1GB + 1.5GB = **47.6GB**? What is the remaining **543.2GB** of space that Daisy reports in "snapshots..." all about? Is there a way to recover that disk space?

I've cleared quite a bit of my user files off my Mac, and have restarted. The disk utility shows this: but a df -h in the terminal as I clear never changes from 89 GB free, and when I try to restore some things from Time Machine, the 'not enough space' message reflects the df results, which should be wrong, instead of the disk utility display. I only have the one volume on my hard drive. This isn't the same question as the proposed duplicated, at all. I am not suggesting that anything is eating my disk space. I'm also not saying that restarting it changes anything. I'm stating that the disk util says I have 300 GB free, which is likely the case given what I deleted, and the OS says ~90 GB free, an amount that did not change as I was deleting things and did not change when restarting the system...so basically the freed space was not given back.

The terminal shows I still have 512GB of space but only 410 is being used in the MacBook Pro, rest is classified as (free space). The disk Utility doesn't show the 84GB anywhere either, is any of the partitions, but the full disk still shows the 512GB. How do I add this (free space) back to my main SSD?

I had a corrupt APFS volume (caused by bad SATA connection — has since been alleviated) of 150 GB reported by First Aid so I decided to create a new volume and reinstall macOS there. In the end of my migration efforts the files I deleted from the bad volume didn't free up any space for any volumes in the same container, so I decided to completely delete the volume using Disk Utility. After doing that I still don't have any more free space in the container, according to Disk Utility. Instead I now have "1 Not Mounted" volume taking up all that space (155.15 GB). I don't see this volume with diskutil list:

% diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         321.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:           Linux Filesystem                         52.5 GB    disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows                 125.9 GB   disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +321.5 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Preboot                 4.9 GB     disk1s2
   2:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.7 GB     disk1s3
   3:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4
   4:                APFS Volume Ventura – data          67.1 GB    disk1s5
   5:                APFS Volume Ventura                 9.4 GB     disk1s6
   6:              APFS Snapshot com.apple.bless.B70F... 9.4 GB     disk1s6s1
   7:                APFS Volume Mojave igen             78.0 GB    disk1s8

It seems ~160 GB have gone missing. I'm not sure what to make of that. My question: **How do I free up the invisible space?** #### Additional info I've run First Aid (in Ventura) several times on the old volume, the new volume, and the container during my migration efforts. As far as I know it has only ever complained about the old volume. Now, after I've set everything up on the new volume and deleted the old one, running First Aid on the entire container seems to tell me that my *new* volume is corrupt ("The volume /dev/rdisk1s8 was found to be corrupt"). Really? I just created it with the sole purpose to fix that exact problem. Did I copy the old volume's corruption with its files..? Also, "overallocation detected on Main device" -- sounds relevant, but I don't know... What does "Main device" refer to?

Running First Aid on “AppleAPFSMedia” (disk1)

Verifying the startup volume will cause this computer to stop responding.

Verifying storage system
Using live mode.
Performing fsck_apfs -n -x -l /dev/disk0s2
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the EFI jumpstart record.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the space manager free queue trees.
Checking the object map.
Checking the encryption key structures.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk1s2.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk1s2 appears to be OK.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk1s3.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk1s3 appears to be OK.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk1s4.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk1s4 appears to be OK.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk1s5.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the document ID tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk1s5 appears to be OK.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk1s6.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking snapshot 1 of 2 (com.apple.os.update-E7844E4A19775C7E8469F08126D2C007CABC3427263D35492B1C05AD70A95CF3)
Checking snapshot 2 of 2 (com.apple.bless.B70FD331-59F2-44A4-9745-6C86F42CA118)
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking the file extent tree.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk1s6 appears to be OK.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk1s7.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the fsroot tree.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk1s7 appears to be OK.
Checking volume /dev/rdisk1s8.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Checking the object map.
Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
Checking the snapshot metadata.
Checking the document ID tree.
Checking the fsroot tree.
warning: inode (id 1218814): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218859): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218861): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218864): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218866): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218868): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218871): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218873): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218876): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218878): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218880): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218882): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218886): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218890): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218896): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218898): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218904): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218906): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218910): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218912): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218914): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218916): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218920): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218922): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218924): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218926): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218928): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218930): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218932): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218934): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218936): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218938): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218940): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218942): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218944): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218946): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218948): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218950): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218952): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218954): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218956): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218958): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218960): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218962): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218964): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218966): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218968): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218970): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218972): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
warning: inode (id 1218974): Resource Fork xattr is missing for compressed file
Too many warnings of this type generated; suppressing subsequent ones.
Checking the extent ref tree.
Verifying volume object map space.
The volume /dev/rdisk1s8 was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Verifying allocated space.
warning: container keybag (63873836+1): UUID CB2248E1-C55E-44EC-86BA-5585934659E6 of entry 0 (tag 3) does not reference any volume
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x28d+1) bitmap address (0xe92f9)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x2db+1) bitmap address (0xe92f9)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x321+1) bitmap address (0xe92f9)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x19ae9+5) bitmap address (0xe9532)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x206e7+1) bitmap address (0xe9533)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x224fe+1) bitmap address (0xe9533)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x22bca+1) bitmap address (0xe9533)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x28497+2) bitmap address (0xe956c)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x2b2c7+1) bitmap address (0xe956c)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x2b2d0+1) bitmap address (0xe956c)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x2b3a7+1) bitmap address (0xe956c)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x2dee1+1) bitmap address (0xe956c)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x2df63+16) bitmap address (0xe956c)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x33097+3) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x33175+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x33187+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x33221+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x34767+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x34769+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x3476b+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x347a0+2) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x347af+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x34d9c+1) bitmap address (0xe94c8)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x3ec55+1) bitmap address (0xe9535)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x48226+1) bitmap address (0xe9c68)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x48232+1) bitmap address (0xe9c68)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70001+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70003+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x7000d+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70012+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x7001f+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70065+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x7007d+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70093+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x7009f+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x700b3+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x700ca+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70110+2) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70194+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x701a0+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x701a3+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x701a9+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x701bd+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x701df+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70204+2) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70217+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70221+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70234+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x70287+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x702d1+1) bitmap address (0xe9113)
Too many warnings of this type generated; suppressing subsequent ones.
Performing deferred repairs.
warning: need to clear bsd flags (0x20) in inode (object-id 1218814)
Skipped 78/78 repairs of this type in total.
warning: found orphan/invalid xattr (id 1218814, name com.apple.decmpfs)
Skipped 78/78 repairs of this type in total.
The container /dev/disk0s2 appears to be OK.
Storage system check exit code is 0.

Operation successful.

Not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with this information. I've since tried repairing the new volume and the container several times in recovery mode (only Mojave recovery is available on this machine). No effect. So basically I'm in this situation: 1. Disk Utility complains about corrupt volume that is unrepairable -- container is "OK" 2. I create a new volume and delete the bad volume lest I run out of space, whereupon I reclaim no space 3. Disk Utility complains about the newly created volume being "corrupt" and insists it be repaired, without actually ever repairing it (and simultaneously concluding that the volume is "OK") 4. I conclude that nothing I'm doing seems to make any difference. Do I continue following the breadcrumbs from Disk Utility, or do I do something else? Suggestions welcome.

My macbook air went to sleep and won’t awaken. Got the blinking file w/? and did a NVRAM and disk recovery first aid but still my computer isn’t locating the startup disk and thus won't start. What else can I do? I do have a Time machine back up.

On my MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) running Sonoma 14.6.1, system data takes up over 300 GB, see screenshot below. **How can I delete all of this data?**

I have noticed that my extra space just suddenly disappears since upgrading to macOS High Sierra. For example, I have 170 GBs free in the morning and then by the afternoon I'm down to 56 GBs. Then sometimes that shoots back up to 170 GBs. It's a little odd and rebooting sometimes works but sometimes doesn't. I started looking into "local snapshots" that are created by Time Machine automatically. I assume these are locally stored snapshots that are created for efficiency of Time Machine. Maybe when it's not connected to the Time Machine disk so that it can still have a versioned backup. Not sure. You can view your local snapshots like so: $ tmutil listlocalsnapshots / com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-14-173102 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-14-212356 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-052254 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-084940 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-094508 com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635 When I run tmutil in my Terminal I see a command called thinlocalsnapshots. What does that do and how do I use it?

I have a MacBook Pro 16" 2019 model with a 4TB SSD internal drive. I am running out of space (VMs and video projects) and even though I moved these VMs and video projects to an external drive, deleted them from internal drive and emptied recycle bin, the space is not freed. How do I reclaim this space? Thank you.

I have a brand new Mac with 4TB of SSD and it seems that ~270 GB are lost. I'd like to recover them if possible. Below is the explanation on how I arrived to that total. **Disk Utility** shows the following: - Used: 388.24 GB - Other Volumes: 17.88 GB - Free: 3.59 TB **Macintosh HD info** shows: - Available: 3.59 TB - Used: 398.5 GB There's a *slight discrepancy* of **7.62 GB** between Disk Utility (total used 388.24 GB + 17.88 GB = 406.12 GB) and Macintosh HD info: 406.12 GB - 398.5 GB = 7.62 GB, but that's ok (Macintosh HD does not show other volumes sizes). When I look at System Settings → General → About → Storage → Storage Settings..., the graphic shows: 402.11 GB used, which is more or less in line with Macintosh HD info. Lower in the Storage window, I get: - Applications: 24.48 GB - Developer: 2.45 GB - Music Creation: 81.8 GB - Other Users & Shared: 261.1 GB - macOS: 18.34 GB - System Data: 13.94 GB For a total of 402.11 GB which, thankfully, corresponds to the graphic part at the top of the window. However, when I open a Finder window → Macintosh HD and request info on the existing folders (both visible† and hidden), I get the following: - .vol: 0 byte - Applications: 24.54 GB - bin: 4.9 MB - cores: 0 byte - Library: 87.49 GB - opt: 204.3 MB - private: 2.87 GB - sbin: 2 MB - System: 14.3 GB - Users: 1.06 GB - usr: 705.9 MB - Volumes: 1 byte The total of both visible and hidden folders is 127.39 GB + ~3.79 GB respectively, for a grand total of ~131.18 GB. The difference between what Storage indicates and what I can gather between the info of the individual folders is quite big: 402.11 GB - 131.18 GB = 270.93 GB For information, Time Machine has not yet been set up on the computer, therefore the suggestion of this Ask Different thread won't work in this case. My questions: - **Any idea on how to find out where are those 270.93 GB gone and, crucially, how to recover them?** - Would *System Settings* → *General* → *Transfer or Reset* → *Erase All Content and Settings...* solve the problem or just be a waste of time? ----- System used: - Apple M3 Max - 128 GB RAM - macOS Sonoma 14.6.1 Other info: - Trash can has been emptied in all profiles - Computer has been rebooted several times ----- † Applications, Library, System, and Users are visible folders, the rest is hidden and can be rendered visible by pressing cmd-shift-., to hide them again press again the same combination keys.

I tried double booting Asahi Linux to mess around with it, but regretted the partition size I choose. So, I tried changing it, but when I deleted the Volumes the free space left over does not show up on Disk Utility. I have tried partitioning disk0 through diskutil, but it tells me there is not enough space on the disk or a missing gap. I also tried erasing the disk and reinstalling macOS, but the free space is still there. It seems that for some reason diskutil and Disk Utility think my drive has no extra space on there despite the 95Gb of free space. I would like to just add the free space back to disk3. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

I'm trying to clean up some space on my iPhone, for this I need to sync it with a new Mac. The Mac doesn't have the files on the device, so sync will erase everything on the device. So I want to backup first, and then sync. But the backup complains there's not enough space (where? Mac has 55GB free). Errrrr. Pretty stuck here! This is the message I get from iTunes (12.3.0.44) when trying to manually backup my iPhone 4S (iOS 8.1.2) to my Mac (Mac Book Pro Yosemite 10.10.5). This is what happened until now: 1. Last sync was on another computer (old Windows laptop), this is the first time trying to backup/sync on this Mac 1. iPhone is full (I want to backup the data and then to cleanup) 1. Mac has 55GB free space 1. Backup wouldn't start, reported not enough space (a different message!) to sync 1. Cleaned the lockdown folder as suggested by Apple 1. Backup had started but reported an error about a "session could not be started" 1. Restarted the device while connected to Mac (as suggested on some forum) 1. Backup had started but reported this message ("iPhone XXX cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items.") Any ideas? EDIT 2017: I no longer use this phone, eventually I didn't find a solution.

ES Explorer is using over 50GB on my iPhone 12 mini (~57.7GB): I don't see anything in ES Explorer: How can I empty it without reinstalling it?

I need to free up space on my Mac and know there are a ton of hidden files that are eating up space (Logic for example downloads a lot of instruments... somewhere). Is there any way I can create an interactive (or non-interactive) treemap of my hard drive? Here is an example of a [treemap from Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemap) !Graphical representation of a treemap

I had 450 gigs of free space on my laptop out of a total of 1000 when I asked the spotlight index to compile. After it was done I only had 218 gigs. Seems like a lot to me. Is this normal? I have a Macbook Pro 15 inch 2018. Operating system is 13.6.3 Ventura. I started the index I think 3 days ago.

My MacBook hard drive is full. I have tried some common methods such as emptying the Trash and rebooting in Safe Mode, but these haven't helped. So I ran a Perl script with root privileges via sudo which adds up file sizes, and I found that the InstallerSandboxes directory is eating up most of my disk space. It can be found on multiple locations, so I suppose it's hardlinked. It has a .PKInstallSandboxManager subdirectory which contains 4 subdirectories with names in format: *SOME-UUID*.activeSandbox. They all have huge sizes: 16.42GB, 18.72GB, 18.76GB and 29.27GB, all of which add up to 83.19GB. All of them contain a Root/Application/Xcode.app so I suppose they are all related to Xcode which is installed on my device (I have an /Application/Xcode.app too). I don't suppose all 4 of them are in use, how can I get rid of the ones that aren't in use?

Got this error, though I have some more space 229 GB / 245 GB RegCannot copy the image because the disk is almost full Domain: com.apple.CoreSimulator.simdiskimaged.SimDiskImageError Code: 14

I have OS X 10.15.7 running on a 500GB SSD and OmniDiskSweeper, GrandPerspective and System Information show that I have used about 270GB but only have about 30GB free. OmniDiskSweeper just counts what is there, but GrandPerspective shows 191GB of "Miscellaneous used space" (big grey box on the side) and System Profiler lists it as 'Other'. I know I should have loads of space because I moved my Photos library to an external disk and I was sitting at over 100GB at that point, but in the months since then it has ticked away. I've tried tmutil listlocalsnapshots / but nothing shows up. ***Something curious but possibly unrelated things*** 1: the disk drive has that second partition "- Data" and it is listed as 500GB too. It may be just me misinterpreting the read out, or poor interface design on Apple's part. The reason I mention this is that Disk Xray Lite also seems confused about disk space, claiming I have used 536GB, presumably because it has counted System > Volumes > Data > Users as well as Users, despite them appearing to be the same thing. 2: I replaced ~/Library/Application Support/Mobile Sync/Backup with an Alias that is to an external drive. I think it only backs up when that drive is plugged in, but maybe it is writing to 'other' Some additional shots from Disk Utility to help diagnosis. The numbers have changed a little bit because I have deleted a few gigabytes, but the balance is the same Disk Utility trying First Aid on one of the volumes

I had approximately 50Gb of Windows VMs on my MacBook Pro internal SSD (128Gb) (OS X 10.7.3). I copied them to an external drive, then deleted them from the internal drive, then emptied the Trash. When I look at disk usage in Activity Monitor it shows the same level of usage as it did prior to deleting 50Gb of files. Any ideas why the space hasn't been freed up?