I had over 250gb of free space on my internal 500gb hard drive. Suddenly it's down to about 80gb. When I check storage via 'about this mac' it shows me system data is using like 300gb. What is happening? Thanks for help.
I am on macOS Monterey 12.4
Macbook Pro mid 2015
2.5ghz Quad core intel i7.
16gb
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.4
Ok. I found it. I went into CCC that backs up my internal ssd. I found
something called 'Snapshots' that was on automatically. It listed 168gb
of use/data. This went back as far as March 2020. I cleared it all
because I already have backups, full backups, to two external drives.
And bam. I now have 260gb of free hard drive/ssd space again.
The snapshot feature of ccc is good, but I don't need it on all the time.
Now that I know to check it out for large system data usage I'll be able
to check it and delete what isn't needed.
Ok. I found it. I went into CCC that backs up my internal ssd. I found
something called 'Snapshots' that was on automatically. It listed 168gb
of use/data. This went back as far as March 2020. I cleared it all
because I already have backups, full backups, to two external drives.
And bam. I now have 260gb of free hard drive/ssd space again.
The snapshot feature of ccc is good, but I don't need it on all the time.
Now that I know to check it out for large system data usage I'll be able
to check it and delete what isn't needed.
slomomontpellier wrote:
I had over 250gb of free space on my internal 500gb hard drive. Suddenly it's down to about 80gb. When I check storage via 'about this mac' it shows me system data is using like 300gb. What is happening? Thanks for help.
I am on macOS Monterey 12.4
Macbook Pro mid 2015
2.5ghz Quad core intel i7.
16gb
What Apple used to label "Other" is now labeled "System Data".
Do some house cleaning—
Empty your Trash — Delete files and folders on Mac - Apple Support
Delete files and folders on Mac - Apple Support
How to free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support
Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support
See used and available storage space on your Mac
See used and available storage space on your Mac - Apple Support
User tip: "Other and What Can I Do About It ?"
What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how… - Apple Community
Try something like OmniDiskSweeper for a GUI to get a good look at itemized file size and location:
OmniDiskSweeper http://www.omnigroup.com/more
Depending on exactly which version of Carbon Copy Cloner is installed the current version is 6.1.2
I use this version on Monterey 12.4 and it works fine. The Snapshots generated by CCC are often time Remove by CCC itself without any User Interaction
Perhaps one needs to tweak the Setting for Safety Net Feature in CCC
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/frequently-asked-questions-about-carbon-copy-cloner-safetynet
Screen shots of storage and manage...
For a long while my available space was about 250gb. This drop was sudden. I'm not sure when it happened, but now my disk shows 86gb left. My applications use most of the disk at around 42gb. 60gb of documents. 21gb of photos. The rest of my work is on external drives. Here are some screen shots. System data was 298 earlier today. Now it's 261gb. When I hit 'manage' you can see there's no way I've got over 400gb of files on my hard drive.
I wonder where all those gb's are going?
Having done all of the cleanup that I can, I have barely any space left. 1.7TB out of 2TB? Any other ideas how to find out what ("System Data") is consuming all of this space?
MacBook-Pro-M1-Max-2021 ~ % diskutil list internal
$/dev/disk0 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 2.0 TB disk0
1: Apple_APFS_ISC 524.3 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 2.0 TB disk0s2
3: Apple_APFS_Recovery 5.4 GB disk0s3
/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: APFS Container Scheme - +2.0 TB disk3
Physical Store disk0s2
1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 15.2 GB disk3s1
2: APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 15.2 GB disk3s1s1
3: APFS Volume Preboot 484.6 MB disk3s2
4: APFS Volume Recovery 811.2 MB disk3s3
5: APFS Volume Data 1.9 TB disk3s5
6: APFS Volume VM 24.6 KB disk3s6
Leroy, thanks for your help. I did go through the links you provided. It explained some things. The massive system data usage not so much. Glad I found it in the CCC snapshot area. All good now.
Why is system data on my macbook pro over 300gb?