"Your start up disk is almost full" message when more than 20GB are available. Something is eating up my ssd space

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Level 1

4 points

"Your start up disk is almost full" message when more than 20GB are available. Something is eating up my ssd space

Hi, thanks for reading. I own a MacBookPro12,1 running El Capitan and I'm coming across this issue: my SSD has 20GB of free space available but somehow after a while using the computer the startup disk almost full alert appears and the free space is only 39,4 MB (always the same value).

I'm getting the available space info from the finder -> get info on Macintosh HD and also using GrandPerspective.

Any ideas about what is going on? TimeMachine maybe? It is frustrating as when this happens some applications crash causing the loss of data / changes.

Thanks in advanced,

Cheers!

M

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 12, 2019 7:32 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jun 20, 2019 8:36 AM in response to M_diss

Disk Space - Free Up

Disk Space – Free Up (2)

Disk Space – Free Up (3)

Disk Space - Free Up - Mavericks

Disk Space Filling Up – OmniDiskSweeper 10.8+

Disk Space Filling Up - WhatSize

Disk Space - Other in High Sierra and later, this is now included in System

Disk Space - "Other" and What Can I Do About It?

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jun 12, 2019 8:46 AM in response to M_diss

It could be Time Machine local snapshots. The article below has a couple of suggestions.

Local Snapshots on Portable Macs

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Answer 3

Jun 20, 2019 8:11 AM in response to M_diss

If you are copying large amounts of files from your boot drive to an external drive, between network share, or even between two external drives — then temporary storage is required on your boot drive and this can eat you out of drive space depending on the size of the copy operation and available space.

You will need alot more than 20GB if you are attempting a macOS update, as you have the size of the installer, the temporary storage that the installer needs, the storage that the installer consumes in the process, and the System caches that are not always cleared after the installation has finished.

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Answer 4

M_diss Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 20, 2019 9:02 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hi VikingOSX,

Many thanks for the helping hand but that is not the case. I must say that this was my first thought as I use quite often the Transmit FTP client. Now I activated the View > Show View Options > Calculate all sizes in Finder and I'll check if something changes considerably next time I get a Disk Almost Full alert.

Cheers!

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