I am suffering with the vanishing storage issue on my mini m1 running Ventura. I have found a folder in the Biome folder ~/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/MailContent/local/tombstone that has over 150 GB in files. There are over 53k files in here. These files have timestamps that increase by minutes and are each 16.8 MB in size. This is what is chewing up my storage. What the heck are these, can they be deleted and how do I eliminate this problem going forward?
ronald dfrommb wrote:
I am suffering with the vanishing storage issue on my mini m1 running Ventura. I have found a folder in the Biome folder ~/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/MailContent/local/tombstone that has over 150 GB in files. There are over 53k files in here. These files have timestamps that increase by minutes and are each 16.8 MB in size. This is what is chewing up my storage. What the heck are these, can they be deleted and how do I eliminate this problem going forward?
hmmm...
my entire < ~/Library/Biome/ > folder is 213.3 MB in comparison .
Can you paint a bigger picture?
old issue, new issue, what changed
what exact macOS (?)— the current stable release, bug fixes, security update macOS 13.1
see if there is anything in these similar post(s) here:
Re: Should we be worried about folder Bio… - Apple Community
Should we be worried about folder Biome, … - Apple Community
"As a last-ditch measure, deleting the contents of the Biome folder shouldn’t result in any data loss."
ref: https://eclecticlight.co/2022/06/27/biome-isnt-about-biometrics-but-suggestions/
To trouble shoot further you can:
—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support
This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account.
—A SafeBoot How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies
Takes a bit longer to get to the login screen, does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, font cache, etc., third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled.
Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.
This test will tell you if third party interference; extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.
Uninstall any and all third party Antivirus, Cleaners, Optimizers, VPN, speeder uppers....
all known to cause issues on the macOS
further—
To get a good look at your System config. and reveal conflicts or issues, you can download/run this trusted utility https://etrecheck.com
If you need help interpreting the report you can post it here in its entirety in the "Additional Text" box in the editing toolbar below, in your reply.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. This machine was bought directly from Apple and has the latest version of Ventura. I use the plain vanilla email app from Apple. I have had this machine for less than a month. I do not run any add on or plugins for Mail. These rouge files started being created shortly after I set the machine up.
As an update:
As I said this tombstone folder is related to Mail content. I took a look at some of the files and found that they contained info that had the characteristics of images as well as actual html links. The files also referenced a specific email account. I also looked at this folder on another machine that was also running Ventura and the same version of the Mail app and the tombstone folder had no files in it whatsoever. I then deleted all my tombstone files after rebooting and not running the Mail app. I now have 177 GB of free space instead of 10. I have restarted Mail and am monitoring the tombstone folder for changes.
tombstone folder
