How do I resolve 'Not enough disk space' and 'changes cannot be saved' errors in Final Cut Pro 12.4?

When investigating areas like this, Finder and System Settings alone are insufficient because “available” can include purgeable space that is still occupied. Apple explicitly distinguishes this from physically free space.

To see the actual available free space, immediately after you get one of those FCP errors, do this:

System Information > General >Storage > All Volumes

Note, it may take a few seconds for the "All Volumes" button to appear.

Ensure this includes all of the below, and make sure you are not exporting to or using any type of network or cloud storage for this procedure. Also ensure you do not have a camera card mounted on the Mac.

• Directly-attached disk holding FCP library
• Directly-attached disk holding FCP media files
• Directly-attached disk receiving FCP output being exported

How much actual free space does that indicate on all volumes?

Hi (bonjour),

Does the sidekickSSD disk contain any media or other FCP library? ExFAT is not a format supported by Final Cut Pro and usually leads to problems. Try quitting FCP, disconnecting this disk, and restarting to see if the issue persists.

Michel

Immediately after the problem happens, export a library XML of the involved library.

• In FCP left sidebar, select library
• File -> Export XML

Use the diagnostic script below in Terminal to verify where each media file is in that library. Put the .sh script in ~/Documents. This .sh script only reads your exported library XML file and prints to the terminal screen the pathname of each media file.

• In terminal change to ~/Documents: cd ~/Documents
• First flag the script as runnable: chmod +x getfcpmedialist.sh
• Run the script: ./getfcpmedialist.sh

It will prompt you for the location of the exported .fcpxmld file. Use Finder to drag and drop that file on top of the terminal where the script is waiting.

It will print a sorted list of each file used by that library. Please copy/paste that list here in a post.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bw650fusoifmqj6erbk6v/getfcpmedialist.sh?rlkey=r48mi204ul30ia3v3n497ha1s&st=exv533fb&dl=0

Maybe the problem is not on the media drive, but the system drive.

Low free space on the system drive can cause lots of issues.

How much free space there?

Hi(bonjour),

May be it’s related to disk permission. Verify if Final Cut Pro has access to write on the SSD.

Michel

Did you check permissions after update?

Did you check permissions?

No need to sound condescending. My drive is 4TB in total. It's an external SSD I've used for the past two years with no problems. I update, and then I get a storage error. And yes, my FCP libraries are stored on the drive.

DarrenEsquire wrote:

No need to sound condescending. My drive is 4TB in total. It's an external SSD…

I didn’t mean to be condescending and I think you are jumping to a conclusion by saying that. The people who post here have widely varying levels of experience and knowledge about their computers and Final Cut. I don’t know what your experience level is. A novice user may not know the subtleties of determining actual free space available on their computers, and where that space is located. That’s all I was trying to say.

Hello, so it just happened again, and my Mac still reports that I have more than enough space. "RottenSSD" is the SSD I edit on. I don't use cloud storage to edit at all, and I usually export to my Downloads folder.

Mind you, I can still edit like normal even after I click "OK", but it appears every time I add a file from one of my folders to the timeline, which is why I think it's a bug.

FCP already has read and write permissions to my SSD and full disk access to my Mac. This issue happened the first time I started using FCP after I updated it (I believe the following day). The prompt goes away when I restart, but eventually comes back.

Are sure that you really have 2TB of FREE space? Or is that just the total size of the drive?

Exactly WHERE is that 2 TB of space you think you have? Is it on the system drive or external storage?

I have half a TB free.

SidekickSSD is not used at all in my editing workflow. I have FCP open, and I just ejected the SSD without any issues. RottenSSD is what I use for FCP.

I checked again before replying to you last!