About This Mac - Incorrect storage space categories report Photos - Multiple Volumes or Disks

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About This Mac - Incorrect storage space categories report Photos - Multiple Volumes or Disks

So this bug has been floating around the MacOS for sometime. I see posts about this bug a few OS revisions back and forward to Mojave. I haven't looked at 10.15 yet, but my bet is it will still be in OS 11 Big Sur.

Looking at the the About This Mac and selecting the Storage tab, everything seems mostly correct.

Allowing time for macOS to calculate how much space is being used by different categories is when the problem shows up. The disk is only 480 GB and the reported Photos usage on the system drive is 740.8 GB. ( I setup the Photos system library on a separate APFS RAID 0 volume "DATA - ADATA SX8200-PRO". ) The usage where the phots are stored is reported correctly on that volume, but macOS is not displaying categories on that volume at all.

This is probable not a bug but more so how macOS was developed.

Pleases let me if you know how to change / fix how macOS calculates how much space is being used by different categories on the different disks?

System Spec - About This Mac

Mac Pro, macOS 10.13

Posted on Aug 17, 2020 9:05 AM

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BDAqua

Level 10

245,471 points

Aug 17, 2020 9:24 AM in response to syops

Hello, I think this is how it works, but I don't rea;;y see the practical value of categorizing the results that much.

It mostly depends on Spotlight, & hence what you might have checked in it's prefs, then to some extent on what the Launch DB thinks handles what files.

I only use the "Storage" report if I've run out of Twilight Zone episodes to watch. :D

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