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Disk storage problem, no room left

We have a Macbook pro running OS 10.14.6. The internal drive is an SSD with 2 TB of memory. Problem is that about half of it taken up with files and apps and yet the other half not available. We are told there is 143 GB of memory left. When we check out memory storage, the system is taking over 1 TB of the drive. Yet, the system folder is 8 GB is size.

We have tried everything we can think of to fix it. Run Disk Utility, Onyx, OmniDiskSweeper, restarted, looked at folders in detail. Just no explanation.

If we do delete some of the files, like removing 50 GB, there is no change in the setting. Still has the same limited amount available. Have done this more than once.

Am attaching a picture that shows how much the system is using. It is the gray part of the bar.

Thanks for any help.


MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Aug 25, 2022 1:12 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Aug 25, 2022 6:36 PM

Terminal code to clean DocumentRevisionsfolder…

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/313102/what-will-occur-if-the-documentrevisions-v100-folder-is-deleted

macos - What will occur if the .DocumentRevisions-V100 folder is deleted? - Ask Different (stackexchange.com)


System Memory OS 10.12.6 Sierra - Apple Community


Look for iOS backups…

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup


Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates. 

Hit enter.


Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.


Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required


http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html


tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /  # deletes all the snapshots


Thanks to BobHarris file sizes, Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal:...


sudo du -hx | sort -h 


sudo du -hx ~/| sort -h 


Similar questions

6 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Aug 25, 2022 6:36 PM in response to Richard Pitcairn

Terminal code to clean DocumentRevisionsfolder…

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/313102/what-will-occur-if-the-documentrevisions-v100-folder-is-deleted

macos - What will occur if the .DocumentRevisions-V100 folder is deleted? - Ask Different (stackexchange.com)


System Memory OS 10.12.6 Sierra - Apple Community


Look for iOS backups…

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup


Purging local backups

Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.

Start Terminal from spotlight.

At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates. 

Hit enter.


Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.

Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.


Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.

Hit enter.

Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required


http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html


tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /  # deletes all the snapshots


Thanks to BobHarris file sizes, Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal:...


sudo du -hx | sort -h 


sudo du -hx ~/| sort -h 


Aug 31, 2022 9:34 AM in response to Richard Pitcairn

Well, went through the suggested steps, but made no difference. Contacted OWC (Other World Computing) which is where I bought the Mac drive and the tech fellow helped me by suggesting that through Recovery mode to reinstall the OS. Did that and now we have the expected memory available. Not sure what that process did but must have somehow cleaned up the system folder.

Disk storage problem, no room left

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