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When I try to update my Mac to the MacOS Monterey it says that my disk does not have enough free space to install it. When I go check the storage on the disk it is empty and I don't have any files, documents, etc on here so I am not sure why it says it's full. Any advice? I don't want to waste any more money to get it fixed.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.6
Actually says 6.06 GB available out of 250.79 of Total Drive Capacity
Meaning the drive is using 244.73 GB of space
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The final word from Apple on Managing the " Other/ System Data “ Category
Other / System Data: Contains files that don’t fall into the categories listed here. This category primarily includes files and data used by the system, such as log files, caches, VM files, and other runtime system resources. Also included are temporary files, fonts, app support files, and plug-ins. You can't manage the contents of this category. The contents are managed by macOS, and the category varies in size depending on the current state of your Mac.
You only have 6 GB available. Installing Monterey requires 25 Gb or more. It is best to have additional "margin" above and beyond what Apple recommends. Actually running out of space can result in an unbeatable computer.
You should always have 15%-20% free space. So 6 Gb free out of 250 GB is only ~ 2%, far too little free space.
When I look at storage on my Mac the display of information looks a bit different. What do you see with Disk Utility, if you select View => Show all devices?
P. Phillips is faster than me! I was typing when he had already responded. He sent a great collection of resources for you to explore to utilize your storage on your Mac. A Mac with just 256 GB storage is always a challenge, you may have to make clever use of external drives and cloud storage to free up the needed space, as detailed in P. Phillips’ links.
You appear to have only 6GB free, which means that the drive IS full…
But there is something funky because you should not see two options in the second shot.
Please run Disk Utility when booted from your usual system drive. Select View->Show All Devices post a screenshot.
The topmost of the three "Macintosh HD - Data" - the one that says "Mount Point: /System/Volumes/Data" is the one that houses your user account, the one that is in use now - where your home folder, Documents, etc. are.
This, however, is pretty small: about 17GB. If you are not missing anything there (not a lot photos, videos, music?) and all your stuff is present, then that is fine. Let us know.
You can delete the last of the "Macintosh HD - Data" volumes - the one that says
"Mount Point: /Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data"
If you end up determining that the big one can be deleted, you will get a lot of space.
But be careful...
Try to mount that volume: select it and click the Mount button. Does it mount? Look for the content in the Finder, and see if there is stuff there that you want to keep.
To do that, select the volume, control-click it and choose Delete APFS Volume.
The big question now is that one volume that is unmounted. That is the one that uses the most space - some 200GB.
If you had a lot of data and it is missing now, that is where it probably is...
👍
Could be the Installation of Monterey to the DATA Volume ?
This seems to be occurring with some regularity these days
Triple Macintosh HD-Data Volumes
Please select each of the Data volumes seen in the image in turn and post screenshots.
Then we can guide you to delete the ones you don’t need and reclaim space.
Wait for @Luis S in very good hands with this support
Mac says "Disk Full" but it isn't
