Macbook air running out of space.

[krs]

Hoody, again that image and space report is notoriously inaccurate. You got that image by using "About This Mac" and then "Storage" and that is known to be inaccurate. The Get Info process I described is much more accurate about what is really going on with the drive. On my own system there is a 3Gb difference between the two right now.

Your statement made me curious because I had never heard that before -that certain repoting of free disk space is "known to be inaccurate" - I certainly didn't know that so I decided to check what was reported on my Mac.
off hand, I can think of three ways to find out how much free disk space one has - the Mac system report, Get Info and Disk Utility. There is also a terminal command to report that information and maybe others - I just looked at the three I listed.
What I found in my case - on Mojave with a 1 TB SSD - isthat the numbers are different but that is because they report different information, not because the reporting is inaccurate.
For me, the system report shows 412.46GB available - that is actually the true free disk space (the available disk space is more)
"Get Info" shows 418.89GB available, but that includes 6.43GB purgeable
Disk Utilities makes it clearer, it also shows 412.46GB but labels that as "free" and then shows 418.89 and labels that as "available"

So if you subtract the purgeable disk space from the 418.89GB available disk space shown in "Get Info", you get the 412.46GB of free space reported by the system report.

I have enclosed a screenshot of all three reports from my Mac.

 

[hoody]

YES, I now have 33.72Gb free when I check disc utilty, because I've checked that the CCC external disc has everything on it and deleted all my photos and documents from the mac SSD. I'm about to have another try at getting the download for High Sierra.
Edit: and it still says this item is unavailable!!

 

[MacInWin]

Did you follow the link I gave to the Apple article and from there the link to the download? It worked for me, from the US store.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...Edit: and it still says this item is unavailable!!

What to do when the Mac App Store says ‘Update Unavailable with This Apple ID’

You may see this even when you havenu2019t changed your Apple ID when downloading or purchasing apps on your Mac.

www.macworld.com

This item is temporarily unavailable Mac … - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

The Item is temporarily unavailable. - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[hoody]

I've been on the phone to apple Oz for the last half hour and they seem to be having the same problem as me.

 

[ferrarr]

If you previously "purchased" those macOS versions, they should be available in the App Store Purchases section.

 

[hoody]

Hi Bob,
No I haven't been able to purchase anything in the way of OS versions because as I found out yesterday after spending a total of four hours on the phone with apple, something's blocking me. The man from apple is phoning me back today. He seems like a great bloke. He was supposed to finish at eight but had no problem going through to 8.30. I'm just hoping we can get this finished today as the SSD is at the post office.

 

[hoody]

I haven't heard fro apple yet, but I've looked on the web and everyone reckons I can use Catalina on this macbook air. While I was writing this, the man from apple phoned me and I put Catalina on. Now I think I've lost a lot of stuff... I'll explain: I have a CCC back up on an external HDD which is bootable to Sierra 10.12.6. On another partition on that drive I have a time machine back up. When the new external HDD gets here, I'll do a back up to it with CCC and time machine on a separate partition and then fit the new internal SSD. I'll restore from that new external HDD no problem. The problem I think I'll encounter is that the old HDD with the CCC back up has Sierra on it as I mentioned before. Is there a way to get around this?

 

[MacInWin]

I'm not following what you plan to do. You have Catalina installed internally, finally. You have a backup of CCC and TM on the same drive (A bad idea, actually, if that drive fails you lose BOTH of them. Backups should be on different drives.) You have a new external drive coming, plan to clone the Catalina drive to it with CCC. Never mind the TM backup you plan, I'll get to that in a minute. You also have an internal SSD coming that you plant to fit internally, then restore from the new external CCC clone. So far, that would work. So what is the problem you think you will encounter? You aren't restoring from the old Sierra backup, you said you would restore from the new Catalina clone. I'm confused.

You may also have an issue with TM and CCC trying to share the same drive. Again, that is a really bad idea as I said earlier. Plus, Catalina has a completely new drive format, APFS, which takes advantage of how SSDs work, and CCC clones that formatting. But TM requires, I think, HFS+, the older format. So the new drive would end up with two different formats in the two partitions. In addition, APFS completely changes what goes on, and even the terminology, in it's space. Instead of partitions, you have Containers, and inside those Containers are Volumes. By default Catalina has two Volumes--Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data. The first is the system drive and is read-only to all users as it is for system files only. The second, Data, is where all user data is kept. To make it look the same as before, Catalina merges the two Volumes into one icon on the desktop named Macintosh HD, and if you open in Finder, it looks exactly like the old Macintosh HD. But it is, in fact, two Volumes. The new APFS also avoids having to size Volumes as you have to do in the old partition scheme, as they share whatever space is remaining in the Container. Here is how that looks in Disk Utility on my Mac:


So, can you explain what you think is the issue you want to avoid? Then maybe we can suggest a set of actions to make this transition of drives easier.

 

[krs]

I haven't heard fro apple yet, but I've looked on the web and everyone reckons I can use Catalina on this macbook air. While I was writing this, the man from apple phoned me and I put Catalina on. Now I think I've lost a lot of stuff... I'll explain: I have a CCC back up on an external HDD which is bootable to Sierra 10.12.6. On another partition on that drive I have a time machine back up. When the new external HDD gets here, I'll do a back up to it with CCC and time machine on a separate partition and then fit the new internal SSD. I'll restore from that new external HDD no problem. The problem I think I'll encounter is that the old HDD with the CCC back up has Sierra on it as I mentioned before. Is there a way to get around this?

If you think you lost a lot of stuff, I wonder if that is because Catalina does not support 32-bit applications and if you have any data that requires a 32-bit application to run, you won't be able to open these files.

Please don't take this wrong, but I think you need to slow down a bit and maybe consult members here about what you want to do and wait for some feedback before you do it since it seems to me that you are not all that familiar with the changes Apple has made to macOS and the resulting implications.
I, for instance, decided to stop at Mojave with my current upgrades for the time being.
There is nothing for me that would require an upgrade to Catalina even though my Mac is supported, Mojave still runs 32-bit applications of which I have a few and Mojave also uses APFS which is optimized for the SSD I'm replacing my spinner drive with.
I realize that the time difference with Australia slows down communications, it's 11:00am Eastern here in North America and 1:00am in the morning where you are, but I think in the end taking things slow and verified by members in this group will be beneficial.

As far as the "lost stuff" is concerned, if there are very specific items that you think are lost on Catalina, then boot into your Sierra CCC clone on the external and check if those items are there.
And like Jake said, change your back up strategy so there are not two backups on the same physical drive.

 

[IWT]

But TM requires, I think, HFS+,

Yes, Jake, that is exactly correct.

Ian

 

[chscag]

And, by default Time Machine will try to format the entire drive as HFS+. CCC likewise may try to do the same thing. Separate drives for separate backups is a must. As stated above, do not place both on the same drive. We realize that external drives in Australia are expensive compared to what we pay here in the States or Canada, but the risk of losing data is at stake.

 

[hoody]

Thanks Jake, krs, Ian and chscag. Between me and the man at apple, over the course of about four and a half hours in total we couldn't get High Sierra or Mojave. I would click on a download link for either one of those and it would say 'not available in Australia' and it would provide a link to the US store which gave the same message, but for the UK store. After going around in circles like this I decided to go for Catalina as it was the only one that showed up in the app store.

I had to get rid of all photos to make room for any OS to go on the original internal SSD. I knew these were all on the external HDD because I booted up from it before doing anything. What I intended to do was back up this drive as it is now to the new external HDD, (when it gets here) install the new internal SSD and run the back up. But the original back up on the old external HDD was backed up while I was on Sierra, so now I don't know if I can use this to put all that stuff on to the new internal HDD.

Yes I do need to slow down a bit, but through my own fault I am where I am at the moment. And no, I didn't take it the wrong way.

In future I'll use separate drives for CCC and time machine.

 

[MacInWin]

Ok, what I would suggest is that you do a clean install to the new internal SSD when it arrives. Maybe make a USB Thumb drive installer to do that. The idea is to get the new SSD internal to boot as if the machine were brand new, no accounts. Then when it offers to migrate your data for you, take that opportunity to import from either of your backups. That process will create the account you have now, with the same password, and then put all your files in place. It will also reinstall all the applications (Except for the 32 bit ones) on the new internal drive. When that process is complete, it will boot into your brand new system, all ready for you to use, clean, ready and with all your files.

Just remember, on the newly installed drive do NOT create an account and then migrate, take that first offer to migrate and let it create the account. That way you won't have to wrestle with permissions on files later on.

Once you have a clean fresh install and everything like you like it, you can decide how to go about backing up. For now, with the new external I would suggest just turning on TM and point to that drive to get at least one clean new backup of your new system. Then you can decide what you may want to do with the old TM and CCC backups. If you decide not to keep them, you can then repurpose that drive to be a CCC destination. If you need to, you can partition both of those drives and use just a portion for TM and CCC. Just don't put the two backups on the same physical device for the reasons given.

 

[hoody]

OK here's where I show my ignorance of these things. I don't know what a clean install is or how to make a USB thumb drive installer or how to get one (the installer). If I do this will I then be able to get back to Mavericks?
As people say when they're on their holidays... wish you were here.

 

[krs]

I'm still wondering about Hoody's comment in post #68 that a "lot of stuff was lost".

If that is really true this seems to have happened when the upgrade to Catalina was done, so I would try to figure out what actually happened and if those lost files are on the Sierra backup.

What I don't understand at all about HS and Mojave, if it is really not available in Australia (which might be possible), why would Apple Australia not know about that?
There are a number ofAustralian members in this forum - are none of them running HS or Mojave?

 

[krs]

OK here's where I show my ignorance of these things. I don't know what a clean install is or how to make a USB thumb drive installer or how to get one (the installer). If I do this will I then be able to get back to Mavericks?
As people say when they're on their holidays... wish you were here.

I assume you mean Mojave, not Mavericks

 

[krs]

Hoody,

I just noticed you have a 2012 iMac running Mojave.
That iMac came with macOS 10.8 so you obviously downloaded Mojave at some point.
Take a look at the iMac application folder to see if macOS 10.14 is still listed - probably not.
But if you log into the Apple store on the iMac, you should be able to download Mojave (10.14) again.
If you can download it again - don't do anything other than the download - DO NOT click install.
Post back here - we can then show you how to make a USB installer of Mojave that you can use on your MacBook

 

[hoody]

I assume you mean Mojave, not Mavericks

Sorry, didn't make my self clear. Firstly I shouldn't have said "get back to." Second I did mean Mojave, but anything from HS onwards would have done.

 

[hoody]

krs, no Mojave on the app store. I'd been trying to get HS or Mojave and I've just tried again, but they just aren't there.