# Unable to clean up any used disk space

**URL:** <https://kopia.discourse.group/t/unable-to-clean-up-any-used-disk-space/8750>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [December 21, 2025, 10:36pm UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/unable-to-clean-up-any-used-disk-space/8750 "2025-12-21T22:36:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cler](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/kopia.discourse.group/cler/32/1937_2.png) [@cler](https://kopia.discourse.group/u/cler)\
**Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 10:36pm UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/unable-to-clean-up-any-used-disk-space/8750/1 "2025-12-21T22:36:59Z")

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Hey everyone.  
I have a 10TB unraid system that I started backing up to a seperate system with a 22TB drive. The repository is a sftp provider.  
After the first few days it was done, and from then I ran a backup every 6 hours with “low” retention.

I mistakenly also backed up some backup files from my computers that write to the unraid system.  
So my drive filled up and I had no spare room to manouver, even after deleting logs and whatnot.  
I did the bad thing and deleted some kopia backup files to free up space.  
Ever since then, I’m getting errors during a full maintanance run. “quick” runs have no errors and backups still run smoothly.

I tried fixing this with everything I found online, from  
`kopia snapshot fix invalid-files --commit`  
or `KOPIA_IGNORE_MAINTENANCE_REWRITE_ERROR=1`

Didnt help, but thats not the point of the problem.  
My problem is that yet again my drives are filling up for no apparent reason.  
I again ran `kopia maintenance run --full` after attempting snapshot fix again and it fixing a few blobs.  
However, the output is as follows:

`GC found 2017937 unused contents (9.1 TB)`  
`GC found 753348 unused contents that are too recent to delete (3.2 TB)`  
`GC found 1755085 in-use contents (4.7 TB)`  
`GC found 197 in-use system-contents (254.2 KB)`  
`GC undeleted 4516 contents (20.8 GB)`  
it then does something (?) and will continue writing more data.  
I then stopped the command and tried it with `safety=none`  
(I know for sure there is nothing else writing backups so should be fine?) which does the same thing.

I even deleted my placeholder file (that I created after the last "incident”) which bought me 100GB, but Kopia filled that up quickly and now I’m at 3.4GB space left!

Before I run into the same issue I cancelled the command… and thats the current state.

As it seems the issues where actually fixed, as maintanance did not throw an error, and `kopia snapshot verify` also says everything is good.

What should I do now? Maintanance just keeps writing more data

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**Author:** ![kapitainsky](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/kopia.discourse.group/kapitainsky/32/535_2.png) [@kapitainsky](https://kopia.discourse.group/u/kapitainsky)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 10:17am UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/unable-to-clean-up-any-used-disk-space/8750/2 "2025-12-22T10:17:42Z")

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> [@cler](#):
>
> The repository is a sftp provider.

Check your provider. Maybe it has some auto snapshots set or something so simple as thrash. In such case does not matter what kopia deletes - it still occupies the space.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cler](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/kopia.discourse.group/cler/32/1937_2.png) [@cler](https://kopia.discourse.group/u/cler)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 10:48am UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/unable-to-clean-up-any-used-disk-space/8750/3 "2025-12-22T10:48:58Z")

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Hi, what I meant with this, is that this is just a separate system running stock Ubuntu server.

Kopia connects over sftp. And as far as I know there is no such thing as automatic trash on Ubuntu.

Sorry for the confusion