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Incorrect Information about Free Space on Macintosh HD

My iMac 2020 (macOS Monterey) with a 1TB SSD internal HD Drive showed me the wrong information about free disk space. I have 4 folders on Macintosh HD and their total capacity consumption is about 373 GB, but the computer shows me about 215 GB of free space. So, where is the 400 GB of free space? I found the Volumes in the Disk Utility sidebar, and there is a Macintosh HD volume that shows 783,46 GB used. However, the System volume (parent folder) shows me only 15 GB. So, how much available space do I indeed have?

Best Answered by

Connie Yang

Answered on Monday, April 29, 2024

If you check the used and available storage space of your Macintosh HD in Disk Utility, you'll be confused as it calculates the purgeable space on the Macintosh HD into the used storage.

The purgeable space on a Mac refers to the space that can be released when macOS is needed. It is always occupied by the Time Machine snapshots, app caches, files in the Trash folder, etc.

To check how much purgeable space your Macintosh HD used, you can go to the Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage. The area with grey lines through it is the purgeable space. It may directly be labeled Purgeable or described as Other Volumes in the Container.

If you want to free up the purgeable space occupied by temporary files like cache files, you can use iBoysoft DiskGeeker. This Mac optimizer can help you clear up junk files on your Macintosh HD with only one click, including cache files, user log files, useless downloads, app cache, etc. Then, you can quickly get much more free space on your Mac.

  1. Download iBoysoft DiskGeeker on your Mac.
  2. Select Macintosh HD - Data on the left sidebar and click Clean Junk from the right toolbar.
  3. Select the types or folders of files you want to delete.
  4. Click Clean to remove them from your Mac.