title: Removing a folder from a git repo's history doesn't make repo smaller
body: <p>I read many linked questions but I have the following problem. </p>
  
  <p>In <a href="https://github.com/alexmacrae/SamplerBox.git" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this repo</a>, there were large files in <code>media/1 Juno-Trumpet</code> (in previous commits), so I followed exactly the <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/17824718/1422096">answer here</a> to delete these files:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git clone https://github.com/alexmacrae/SamplerBox.git
  git count-objects -vH
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Total filesize: 54MB</p>
  
  <pre><code>git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf "media/1 Juno-Trumpet"' --prune-empty HEAD
  git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/original/ | xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d
  echo "media/1 Juno-Trumpet/" &gt;&gt; .gitignore
  git add .gitignore
  git commit -m 'Removing a folder from git history'
  git gc
  git count-objects -vH
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Total filesize: 54MB</p>
  
  <p><strong>Question:</strong> Why hasn't the repo's size changed? How to make the repo size smaller after such a cleanup?</p>