My disk is almost full but hard drive isn't, how to fix it?

Hello, recently, I’ve encountered a strange problem. Can someone help me? I have a lot of space on my hard drive, and I’ve deleted many things to free up space, but I still receive a warning that “disk almost full.” Additionally, it’s difficult to save files on the hard drive. This is very puzzling to me. what could be causing this issue?

I think this may caused by a file system error. You can use Disk Utility to repair the file system.

  1. Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
  2. Select your hard drive (usually Macintosh HD), then click the “First Aid” button.
  3. Confirm to run First Aid and wait for the scan and repair process to complete.
  4. Once the repair is finished, restart your Mac and check if the issue is resolved.

Local snapshots may be occupying space. Local snapshots are stored on your hard drive and take up actual storage space. As the number of snapshots increases, they may still occupy space even if you delete other files. You can follow these steps to delete local snapshots:

  1. Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities).
  2. Enter the command tmutil listlocalsnapshots / and press Enter.
  3. If snapshots are listed, you can use the command tmutil deletelocalsnapshots (for example: tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2024-10-12-123456 ) to delete specific snapshots.
  4. Repeat step 3 until there are no more unwanted snapshots. After completing this, restart your Mac.

You can read this article and find more solutions: [Fixed!] Your (Startup)Disk Is Almost Full Error on Mac