Oh, hey! This looks exactly like my problem that i posted a while back Strange disk space usage leak after InfluxDB 1.8.x upgrade
It seems to have something to do with shard compaction causing tsm.tmp files to be left behind, which eat up space, but are cleaned up at a restart.
Still co clue why it happens, or how to fix it. Seriously considering a downgrade to 1.7.9 just to see if that will avoid the problem