Short post. … I had a temp user account to try some apps and saw, from my primary account that an app had created 600+ GB of crap in the downloads folder!
Wanted the disc space back, all of it, and deleted the user account. … Now I have 676GB in hidden space that Daisy Disk can’t access! … How do I delete this? [this is not including 19.9 purgable].
Searched this forum and can say it’s not a CCC issue (haven’t cloned this computer or loaded the app). … Not sure I’ve even set up Time Machine on it. … I think this is all the junk from the deleted user account.
TIA for any help.
–Tim
P.S. I’m in the middle of moving; so I might not respond a lot and may put this mac mini in a box and fix it on the other end … Was hoping to put some key files on it as a triple-back-up during the move. Not happening now…
Adding: I’m mad at myself because I bought this MacMini with extra space and now I’ve gone and mucked it up
May have to do a clean install when my move is done. That’s not all bad. Will be a lot faster w/o any legacy bits, bytes and software that I thought might be a good idea at the time.
The files are probably being saved by a snapshot.
Since CCC is not installed, perhaps it is Time Machine.
If you turn off Back Up Automatically, Time Machine will release its snapshots.
If you’re adventurous, there are also ways to delete snapshots from the Terminal, if need be.
I think anything that is purgeable would be listed in purgeable, which is only 19GiB in this case.
I do see that snapshots is ?
and still hidden is 673GiB, so I’m not sure now.
The files really were in the temporary user account I created to test something. Glad I made a temp user account to see if the app was well behaved or not. Spoiler: It did not behave!
I deleted that user and was alarmed because I had all that space taken up (confirmed for some time by both file manager and scan/rescan by Daisy Disk).
Today, the file space is free!!
Does the OS just take a long time to delete a large user home folder?
(And, while it’s deleting that folder, does it mark the space as hidden until it’s finished clearing it?).
So: Fixed! (Fixed itself)
And: Thank you all for weighing in. I was a bit distraught.
And (2): So glad it resolved without my needing to do anything, before I packed it!
… Was hoping to put some key files on it as a triple-back-up during the move. Not happening now…