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Folder sizes on external drive dramatically wrong, yet system shows correct aggregate size used.

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Get info shows 2.56Tb used on drive (out of 4Tb). Yet, 3 folders show about 2Tb, 2Tb, 50Gb. That would be more than the 4Tb drive can hold. Drive show 1.4Tb free space. At one point, the drive showed folders totally over 6.5Tb but I've since deleted folders trying to weed out 'corrupt' files.

I have Google'd and read and tried almost every suggestion possible. This has gone on for weeks. I've exhausted all found options.

Actions I have taken

  • Ran Disk First Aid from recovery mode many times.
  • Booted in SafeMode.
  • I have run Onyx routines hoping it may help
  • Copying the folders to another drive shows the erroneous size in folder sizes in the copied versions!
  • I have reset all file permissions using terminal commands (at some point in my past years ago this worked, at least I think I remember that working for similar problem)
  • Searched for hidden files, nothing unusual
  • Completely rebuilt Spotlight across all volumes (internal and external)

Folders contain media files, Lightroom, Apple Photos, and Aperture libraries. It's my personal library of all my photos and videos.

Hardware details:

  1. 4Tb Crucial X9 SSD as an external drive. APFS Formatted, encrypted. Drive connected directly with USB-C (not via a hub).

MacBook M2 Max, Sonoma 14.3 32Gb ram

Any ideas outside of what I've listed? I would really appreciate any help.

  • Paul
clarknet
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  • I forgot the Screen shot, Doh!

    SCREENSHOT HERE: https://imgur.com/a/wfVQHtd

     – clarknet Feb 15 '24 at 16:31
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    Did you duplicate/copy any files at any point? Like, are any of the folders copies of other folders? – Ezekiel Feb 15 '24 at 16:38
  • In the terminal what does du show - or also what do tools mentioned in https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5353/how-can-i-figure-out-whats-slowly-eating-my-drive-space say (I use OmniDiskSweeper) – mmmmmm Feb 15 '24 at 17:41
  • @Ezekiel - There are many folders in the three folders. Hundreds if not thousands of folders because the images are sorted by Year/Mo/Day by Lightroom. At least 30 years of photos. as for duplicating/copying files - I don't understand, but yes I have duplicated and copied inside the folders – clarknet Feb 15 '24 at 18:56
  • @mmmmmm I use omnidisk sweeper. I forgot to mention that. it shows the total volume correct, but the idividual folders in question are greater than the drive space, similar to the finder's get info. – clarknet Feb 15 '24 at 19:37
  • Update - I found I have multiple folders that have very odd behavior - Using Finder, Search for "Folders" and "Number of items 1" -- I am finding multiple folders that have multiple items in them in the results. Many are truly empty folders, but some have more folders in them, some have images in them. All folders show up fine in folder. (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251146305?sortBy=best) – clarknet Feb 15 '24 at 20:19
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    It’s possible that you have hard links. That means the same file appears and counts in two directories. So folder a might have 1.97 GB of files. And folder B might have the exact same 1.97 GB of files. Together they use 1.97 GB on your hard disk. – gnasher729 Feb 16 '24 at 07:34
  • APFS does duplicate files by creating duplicate catalog info for the same blocks. If the drive is otherwise reporting no errors, and you have a backup; and you're not running out of free space on the drive, I wouldn't worry about it. – benwiggy Feb 16 '24 at 12:46
  • Update: So I took the route of doing a new, fresh back up to a reformatted drive (clean). Cleaned all empty folders. Thousands of folders removed. Im suspicious these were problematic, some 'reported' as much as 50k yet empty. Checked for invisibles, there was nothing suspicious, just odd sizes. Turned off spotlight (read that somewhere). New copy appears to be correct.

    All input appreciated. My first question here, and I very impressed. Hope to give back.

     – clarknet Feb 16 '24 at 15:05
  • @gnasher729 Is there a way in macOS terminal to find all hard links? I Googled a variety of options, but all did not work in macOS unix. While I believe I've achieved a clean enough version of my files and folders, I'd like to see if there may be hard links roaming still. – clarknet Feb 16 '24 at 15:27
  • @clarknet You can write what you did to fix it and self-accept it so your question is marked as answered – Ezekiel Feb 16 '24 at 20:05

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