deletingdisk-spacemacos
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?
⌘ Command⌥ Option⌫ Delete will permanently delete files, with a confirmation dialog warning that this action can not be undone. ⌘Command⌫ Delete simply moves files to Trash, without confirmation.
Tip: whenever you want Mac app to do the same action but a little differently, try doing it with ⌥ Option button pressed.
It's likely in /Volumes/MobileBackups and you can easily delete it by entering Time Machine and navigating to the folder where the file existed. Select the file then command-click (right-click) and delete all backups of that file.
Normally, the system information window shows the backup space, but I have seen this window get hung up and not properly report storage space when Spotlight and/or the disk catalog are wonky.
You can also wipe all local backups by disabling the local store:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
If the above steps doesn't work, you'll want to boot into recovery mode and run Disk Utility to check that the directory structure and file system catalog are correct. A fsck -fy / in single user mode is also equivalent if you are so inclined to fix things from terminal or want to perform a safe boot and have the system clean things up systematically.
Best Answer
The answer relates to changes to Time Machine backups in Lion.
My understanding is that when a TM back up is attempted when the back up disk is not connected, a back up is made in /Volumes/MobileBackups.
These back ups do not go away the next time TM runs with the back up disk connected. I am not sure if the OS will eventually reclaim this space.
You can disable the local back ups by running one of the following commands (depending on your version of Mac OS):
After you run this command /Volumes/MobileBackups is deleted.
I'm sure there is a good reason for the local backups and I don't necessarily recommend disabling them, but they were - in combination with some large deleted folders - the cause of disk space appearing to be still in use.
You can re-enable mobile backups by running:
More info here - http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/18