Purgeable data on macintosh internal drive and external hard drives

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I have purgeable data on my internal Macintosh 1Tb SSD as well as on external hard drives. I am running Mojave on a 2017 27" 5K iMac

Firstly what is purgeable data ?

Can I stop it growing?

How do I delete it from both the internal Macintosh drive and the external hard drives.



Thanks in advance..

Stay safe folks.


Cheers

Bernard
 

Rod


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IWT


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Hi Bernard and welcome.

I am linking you to two articles which explain what Purgeable Data means and how to delete or modify it.

NB Even if you can't recall doing so, you must have turned On this facility. The 2 articles go into this in some detail. But do remember that deleting the data or turning Off this feature requires that you have that data stored on your Mac. You obviously don't want to lose any data.

If after reading these articles, you are still unclear about things, please don't hesitate to post back.

How to Clear Purgeable Space on Mac (A Quick Guide)
How to Clear Purgeable Storage Space on macOS [Solved]

Ian

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Quick typer, Rod; but we each thought along the same lines:)

Ian
 
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Cheers Rod.. will take a look at it tomorrow..

- - - Updated - - -

Cheers Ian I will look at them tomorrow .. bedtime here in Australia
 

Rod


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bernard smith, please bear in mind that the "solved" link provided by both Ian and I is essentially an advert for Disk Drill and although it gives a good description of how purgeable storage works Disk Drill (although a handy app) may not be necessary to solve your issue at this time.
I personally have no purgeable storage space because I have never chosen to Optimise Storage. I prefer to manage my own storage by offloading data to external drives or simply deleting redundant files or apps.
Having said that there is nothing wrong with utilising Apple's iCloud optimised storage system to reduce clutter and old or "unnecessary" files but this may mean you have to pay for additional iCloud storage space. Obviously it also means that should you wish to access these files in the future they would have to be downloaded.
 
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Hi Rod
I have amended the i cloud set up which has reduced the amount of data earmarked as purgeable and I now only have 28 GB of purgeable on the internal Macintosh drive. Is there away to identify these files or is it a case of manually deleting the files (carefully of course) on the Macintosh drive?

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Hi Ian

I have amended the i cloud set up which has reduced the amount of data earmarked as purgeable and I now only have 28 GB of purgeable on the internal Macintosh drive. Is there away to identify these files or is it a case of manually deleting the files (carefully of course) on the Macintosh drive?
 

Rod


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Also a useful app, I prefer Daisy Disk to Disk Drill although they both take a little learning. I guess I just like the User Interface more on Daisy Disk. Both are good maintainence tools and probably the best way to keep your storage free of unneeded stuff.
 

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