Online only files still taking up space on hard drive!

[Peter Marigold]

I'm trying desperately to clear out my hard drive (so Photoshop can open!) and have made tons of folders and files 'online only' sometime ago.

However, when I inspect the the folders and files (I'm using the app Folder Size) these STILL take up space on my laptop. 

An example of one folder here is my 'Camera Uploads' which are entirely online only (the grey cloud icon), but still taking up 18gb of space. This is the case for all the folders that are 'online only'

Any idea what is going on here?

removed links 

TIA. 

[Peter Marigold]

Hi Jay, 

afraid it's going to be a bit clunky... I'll focus on one folder to start as there are loads in there!

So looking at the LONDON MET folder called '2.PROSPECT' it says there is 2.9GB inside...  

Inside that is a folder called 'PROSPECT HM' - showing 1.89GB:

Inside that folder is a list of films. The Foldersize app I'm using indicates that those films are taking up space on the hard drive:

however when I open the same folder using the windows file explorer it shows all the same files with the grey cloud icon:

Also, just to be thorough, the 'Prospect HM' folder also has the grey cloud icon in file explorer if I go up a level:

Also, if I click on the properties of that folder, it shows that it is using 1.88GB

Thanks for your help!

[Hannah]

Hey @Peter Marigold, I hope you don't mind if I join the discussion!

I wanted to point out something very important about the size of your files.

If you go to the Dropbox folder in your file explorer and right click on an "online-only" folder and choose "properties", you will see the size of the folder, but if you take a closer look, right under "size", you'll see "size on disk"; that's the actual size of the folder on your hard drive.

And that is because you made the folder online-only.

If you were to right click on the same folder, choose to make it available offline, and follow the same steps, the "size on disk" number should show the same info as the "size" one. Can you confirm that's the case?