Level 1

4 points

System Data is out of control.

I have a Mid-2015 Macbook Pro, 15-in Retina, Model identifier "MacBookPro11,5"

I currently have a 1TB SSD installed, 595.8GB of which is occupied by the nebulous "System Storage" category.

I've purchased CleanMyMacX and run it several times, that cleaned up about 2GB of space. unfortunately, That's about all that happened.

I recently installed this handy little tool called Disk Inventory X, which gives a visual breakdown of everything on the drive based on the amount of storage occupied.

As you can see, "System Storage" doesn't appear as a category,

looking at Disk Utility, it says that the MacintoshHD drive is currently being used by 5 volumes,

but only 4 are listed.

to recap what i've tried: CleanMyMacX, DiskCleanerLite, PRAM resets, SMC resets, manually searching through the system directories for unusually large folders.

I'm aware my Laptop is getting rather old (it has over 1200 cycles on the battery), but i currently do not have the means to replace it or get it serviced. I just want my storage back.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Feb 9, 2023 8:43 AM

Top-ranking reply

Tesserax

Level 10

157,980 points

Posted on Feb 10, 2023 9:53 AM

Not exactly sure what is going on with your Mac. System primarily includes files and data used by the system, such as log files, caches, VM files, and other runtime system resources. It also includes temporary files, fonts, app support files, and plug-ins. Spotlight also uses this space.

FWIW. The "Other" category was renamed to "System Data" starting with macOS Monterey.

One thing I can think of is to avoid using 3rd-party "cleaner" apps. These tend to cause more issues that resolve them, and we get numerous posts here with folks asking for assistance with issue that turn out to be the result of using them.

Lastly, have you considered, completely erasing your system drive, and installing a "clean" copy of macOS ... and then, after you confirm that "System Data" is now more manageble, restoring your data from a backup?

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23 replies

FanDead Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 9, 2023 8:15 PM in response to Tesserax

is that a setting that can be changed or disabled? I'm not seeing anything in Time Machine system preferences.

if not, is there anyway to delete these snapshots, because at this point they're not being very useful

FanDead Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 10, 2023 9:00 AM in response to Tesserax

Ok. So, i disabled automatic snapshots last night around 9:18, as of right now only ~3GB of space has been freed up

Using the Terminal command you listed with the sudo prefix didn't yield anything, as I do not have Admin credentials, and the individual who does is far too busy to assist me right now. however, removin the sudo and just inputting tmutil listlocalsnapshots / resulted in the following output

Snapshots for volume group containing disk /:

com.apple.TimeMachine.2023-01-12-192306.local (dataless)

com.apple.os.update-F5C5616AE870B47846005A91E114C0212A596352A26CD27BF28F6CA5A3C1009A

com.apple.os.update-MSUPrepareUpdate

I doubt update files could take up so much space.

Are there any terminal commands that would let me see everything on the disk, along with the size of each directory?

Tesserax

Level 10

157,980 points

Feb 10, 2023 9:15 AM in response to FanDead

The first one appears to be a snapshot. The latter appears to be a remnant of a macOS update.

Are there commands that can be used to see what is on the disk? Yes, macOS is based on a variation of Linux. If you are familiar with Linux, then one of those commands is: The "list" command, ls.

Again, the important thing to understand, is the "System" is controlled by macOS. It was not designed to be user maintained.

FanDead Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 10, 2023 9:28 AM in response to Tesserax

I restarted the laptop after checking updates, now i have 24.5GB of free space, though System has expanded by another GB, go figure.

I'm aware that System is controlled by MacOS, it just doesn't seem to be doing a great job of it. I can't even download things from my iCloud or OneDrive storage if they exceed the amount of available space (duh), because that nebulous "Other" doesn't shrink or reduce itself

FanDead Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 10, 2023 3:07 PM in response to Tesserax

I didn't start using CleanMyMacX until after this problem started lol. I didn't really want to use it either, but i was out of ideas, so i gave it a shot. didn't really do anything.

I have considered doing a fresh install and recovering from Backup, but the backup file seems to include the giant "System Data" chunk, because the backup file is 985-ish GB. So I wasn't sure if wiping the laptop and restoring from a backup would actually do anything

FanDead Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 11, 2023 9:42 AM in response to Owl-53

Huh. never knew a program as big as CMMX was on the "naughty list" as far as Apple is concerned.

so my Laptop has the 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, so you'd recommend i wipe it with Disk Utility yes?

how would you suggest go about restoring my data then, if not by using startup assist?

MartinR

Level 7

24,264 points

Feb 12, 2023 6:40 AM in response to Tesserax

macOS is based on a variation of Linux.

Could you provide some documentation on that? I'd like to read it. I have never heard of OS X/macOS being based on Linux.

My understanding is that the genealogy of OS X/macOS is AT&T Unix > BSD > nextSTEP/OPENSTEP > OS X > macOS.

Linux (GNU/Linux) was originally developed independently, from scratch, by Linus Torvalds. Admittedly he did incorporate concepts from AT&T publications about UNIX, and many Linux commands are written to be identical to UNIX commands, so it is certainly UNIX-like. But Linux > OS X/macOS? Never heard of that before.

FanDead Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 9, 2023 9:16 PM in response to Tesserax

So, i've done that, how long does it take for that to happen...?

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System Data is out of control.