Check where the space is actually being used.  you might be shrinking the data, but there is something else growing to get in the way.

a key command to start with at the root is

    du -h --max-depth=1

and then take it up each folder to understand where what space is being used.  Noting that the main Retain message store will take a long time to run through.

a possibility is that your mail volume/size is growing and you will need to grow your storage here.

Thank you,  I am going to run this command until I get to that large volume.  One thing that is important to me is though is: when I run the deletion job the report that it returns to me is an html. file that is 125MB in size and is nothing but a table showing me the thousands of entries it deleted, yet my free space is still getting less with each day rather than retrieving any space at all.. I mean an 125MB html deletion report should have gotten me some space back.. but I have literally seen no return.

Yes I may need to grow the storage and I'm ready to do that if need be, but the storage pool is currently showing messages that are very old, when I run an audit report it returns messages that should not be there according to the deletion jobs I had previously run.  I can grow storage this year, but what's gonna happen when that fills up as well, if I can't maintain the space than growing the storage to solve the potential problem never ends.. 

Here is an activity which maybe helps:

Do a "deletion report" for a mailbox.

Go for Mailbox deletion.

Select a mailbox which is not really important (just in case if something fails)

And now select "Generate a report ...". (Usually) the mailbox will not be deleted. However there will be a "re-organizing" activity in the background which will prune database and storage ...

Thank you, Unfortunately I do not have that function on my version of Retain.

Maybe the menus are different now, but do you have a similar option:

In recent days there was only generate report - without orphane ...

This is the closest to what you have sent that I can find in the menu

Yes, right. Run the report! (Do not delete!)

Sean Wirebaugh said:

Yes I may need to grow the storage and I'm ready to do that if need be, but the storage pool is currently showing messages that are very old, when I run an audit report it returns messages that should not be there according to the deletion jobs I had previously run.  I can grow storage this year, but what's gonna happen when that fills up as well, if I can't maintain the space than growing the storage to solve the potential problem never ends.. 

If your mail volume has grown, it will reflect this.  so do check that end.  What is the new mail rate now compare to the new mail rate before the retention expiry imposed by the deletion jobs?

can you see the deletion effective from the perspective of browsing some accounts for the oldest mail found in that perspective

is your definition of 'very old' well beyond that which the deletion job should clear?  if so where on the Retain server are they?  what they are may provide another clue.

What is in stopping you from upgrading the system or migrating to a new box with the new version?  Which OS/version are you running Retain on,    Which DB is it using?
   and what email system(s) are you archiving for?

When was the box last rebooted?

I wonder if you were to do a one of job with the Report only would kicks things off some.  worth a try, perhaps with both the same date/age range as your normal job and another one that is a week or more longer/further in the past to see if it still sees messages in the system.

Yes, it will, Andy.

I was in the same situation at one customer and opened a case. This option was a great hint.

And as you see MF has supplemented this option for newer versions with description with "orphan".