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I ran a storage check over my external hard drive (using omnidisksweeper) and found this: enter image description here

While under the storage section of "About This Mac", I found this: enter image description here

Which is accurate? If the omnidisksweeper is accurate, why is it that Mac says that there is free space of 600GB? I am quite confused and I am doing this check because I want to clear some of the old time machine backups (such as 2016-06-15) and not sure what are the files that consumed the most storage (and trying to delete them).

Pls advise! My end goal is to delete some large spaces files (so I was trying to inspect them with Get Info but it took too long time so ended up using omnidisksweeper)!

Second Question >> Also, is it safe to just delete the files in Finder (aka command+delete in Finder)? Will it affect Mac's future backup restoration?

Thanks.

alphawolf
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  • I'd attribute the ~200 GB difference to the 74.8 + 75.1 + 47.9 GB which somehow shows up on your app, but can be purged when demanded. No expert on DiskUsage here, nor did I comment on "deleting" them. – anki Dec 18 '19 at 18:21
  • I would not delete anything. When you need backup, you need backup. Time machine uses Unix links to keep track of things. The counting app you used got confused, I'd guess. – historystamp Dec 18 '19 at 20:17
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    Additionally - Time Machine is designed to fill the volume over time, to maintain as long a history as it can, after which it recycles the oldest data. If you want it to use less space, put it on a smaller volume. – Tetsujin Dec 18 '19 at 20:20
  • TM use 'directory hardlink'. omnidisksweeper might or might not recognize size correctly (counting some file repeatedly). – amdyes Dec 19 '19 at 08:41

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