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No way to make enough space for Big Sur

I'm trying to upgrade the operating system on my MacBook Pro to Big Sur, however there is no possible way for me to do this due to lack of storage space.


I have deleted everything I possibly can and now have only the bare minimum on the laptop. There is absolutely nothing else I can delete, however I'm 12GB short to be able to actually install the system. Has anyone else had this issue - is there anything I can do? The notifications to upgrade are doing my head in, especially as there seems to be nothing I can do.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jan 17, 2021 8:32 AM

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Posted on Jan 17, 2021 9:26 AM

The bottom line is that you have two options;


  1. Delete old files off the internal drive to make room.
  2. Buy an external drive.


If your Mac is Pre-2013 then you can buy another internal drive.


You can also use the external drive to copy old files to, if you don't want to actually delete them.

6 replies

Jan 17, 2021 8:54 AM in response to nicolabirrell

How much free space do you have.


Quite often, or more than often the Disk Usage read out in About This Mac Storage

is incorrect, this can sometimes be rectified by reindexing Spotlight.


How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac – Apple Support

Move the Macintosh HD (or the name you gave your disk) in to the Privacy panel.

Quit System Preferences.

Open System Preferences> Spotlight> Privacy highlight Macintosh HD and press the minus button.

The mac will start rebuilding the Spotlight index.

Check by clicking on Spotlight in the menubar and enter word, if it is indexing you should see a progress bar.


If re-indexing has not solved your problem then run this app, https://www.omnigroup.com/more

this will give an accurate account of the storage used. When the app has created its overview you can look at

the Users folder in the output and see what each user has stored, you can then delete files from there.

Do not delete any files or folders in any System or Library folders or any files you do not understand.

Jan 17, 2021 8:56 AM in response to Harina_

I need another 12GB free to install the update. The system is using nearly 70GB of space and apps that I can't delete 32GB (which seems really excessive to me but it must be right).


Yeah I've been through it with a fine toothed comb at this point, I've taken everything unnecessary off of it. I just can't work out how the laptop can be short of storage when its running on bare bones :(

No way to make enough space for Big Sur

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