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Deleting FCPX generated files doesn’t free disk space
I tried “Delete Generated Library Files…” for the first time in order to archive some projects I didn’t want to completely delete. I chose all the options for deletion so my libraries would only contain my original media. After going through the process for four libraries, I expected to regain about 300 GB of storage (based on what FCP showed in the Library Properties window), but the Finder still reports the drive having only 29 GB available. I have quit FCP, restarted the computer, even tried booting in Safe mode.
These libraries were all stored on a disk separate from my boot drive. When I did the same thing for a library stored on the boot drive, I was able to recover disk space.
Any ideas what could be happening here?
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4 Replies
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Eric, normally doing that should free up disk space. I’d first verifying the trash is empty, then running Disk Utility First Aid on the external drives to ensure all the space usage numbers are updated.
One exception is deleting generated library files will not delete thumbnails, waveforms or optical flow analysis files. In some cases the total of that can be large. Probably the easiest and safest way to delete all that is use the 3rd-party utility Final Cut Library Manager. It also has the advantage of scanning all your libraries and will safely delete that stuff without requiring you to load each library within FCPX: https://www.arcticwhiteness.com/finalcutlibrarymanager/
A good free 3rd-party utility to examine space consumption is OmniDiskSweeper. It has no ads or malware. It scans your disk and builds a column-like sorted list where you can rapidly identify what is consuming space: https://www.omnigroup.com/more
Is that external disk ExFAT, HFS+ or APFS?
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Thanks for the reply. The disk is APFS. It is technically not an external disk; it is the original HD in my iMac, but I am using an external Thunderbolt SSD as my startup drive.
<font face=”inherit”>I downloaded OmniDiskSweeper. The </font>results<font face=”inherit”> are curious, </font>because<font face=”inherit”> it reports 632 GB on the disk, whereas Finder reports 950 GB. That difference corresponds pretty closely to the amount I expected to gain. I’m comparing the two lists now to see what is different.</font>
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It might be APFS local snapshots consuming space. If you confirm via OmniDiskSweeper that FCPX libraries aren’t the problem, then it’s not an FCPX issue but a MacOS system support issue.
Here is some info about APFS local snapshots and space consumption: https://eclecticlight.co/2020/04/09/where-did-all-that-free-space-go-on-my-apfs-disk/
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Okay, fixed it! Thanks! I don’t know how long it would have taken me to figure that out without your help. I understood the function of snapshots, but I still don’t exactly understand how they work.
Feel free to stop here if you don’t want to read about the confusing steps it took to actually fix it. Based on the link you gave me, I looked at Carbon Copy Cloner’s list of snapshots. There were eight: one at 9 GB size, the rest no more than 200 MB. So that didn’t seem promising. But later I noticed that in CCC’s *graph* of disk usage, it showed 305 GB of snapshots. I decided to try deleting a snapshot, choosing the oldest one which was only 50 MB. The graph updated to show only 55 GB of snapshots. This was and is still completely puzzling to me. In the Finder, nothing had changed. After a reboot, CCC was back to showing 305 GB of snapshots. I then deleted all but the most recent 9 GB snapshot. Suddenly, that one remaining snapshot in the list was changed to 305 GB! Deleted that one and that finally did the trick!
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