System Storage taking up over half of my flash drive

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Level 1

5 points

System Storage taking up over half of my flash drive

Hi,

Currently my system storage takes up 265GB of my 500GB Flash drive.

No matter what I delete (music, photos, etc.) the system portion always seems to fill the gap, leaving just 50GB free space every time. Not enough to back up my iphone or ipad.

It is a 2015 Macbook Pro running Mojave v10.14.5 (most recent version at time of writing).

I have tried solutions suggested in other similar posts with no luck:

Used Terminal to find and delete any Time Machine snapshots on the drive. Found a handful, but deleting them only freed up around 60GB, which has since disappeared into System Storage again.

I have checked the mail.com folder for any massive rogue log files (seemed to be the cause for some users), with no result.

I am at the limit of my limited computer skills here and am not comfortable rooting around in the system folders.

Any other suggestions as to what the problem could be and how to fix it greatly appreciated.

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 19, 2019 8:15 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

wtbull1

Level 1

58 points

Jun 19, 2019 2:52 PM in response to heddwyn1

honestly its probably another folder in the hidden library I would sort by list view than use the view menu at the top to calculate all sizes it will give you a better understanding of where space is being taken up.

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Answer 2

heddwyn1 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jun 19, 2019 10:26 AM in response to heddwyn1

After checking my trash from the About... Storage as Peter suggested I noticed that my Photos were just 13mb, which seemed crazy small.

After loading the app and getting the "welcome to Photos" message (I don't like using it so hadn't in a while) it started re-sorting my photo library.

My storage now looks like this...

So those photos were hidden in System, I guess, waiting for the next time I opened the app.

I've gone around opening and closing all my other apps (Logic, Mainstage, imovie etc.) but none of them have had the same effect.

My problem still is that even with the correction for Photos I only have 50GB spare and every time I try and free up space System will eat it up to that point.

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