Available storage is 5GB no matter what I do

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Level 1

4 points

Available storage is 5GB no matter what I do

Big Sur version 11/6/5

MacBook Pro (12 inch 2019)

121 GB

I only have 5GB of available storage. But when I restart in recovery mode and check disk utilit it says I have 37GB~ of space.

After I reboot, the second I start using my computer (Photoshop mainly) the available space slowly ticks down until its back to around 5GB. The error seems to come from the other volumes section being inconsistent. Nothing I do seems to lower the disk space anyways—I regularly clean out caches and logs and yet my storage goes up every day even when I don't download things. I attached pictures of the process, this has been happening every couple hours.

I am sure the storage display is inaccurate because there have been times where I have deleted lots of files at once (1GB of photos for example) and available space goes down instead of up. The space shown in recovery mode seems much more accurate.

How do I fix this issue of incorrect storage?

(Also, it's not time machine snapshots as I don't have any backups.)

MacBook Air 13″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Mar 7, 2023 2:22 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Mar 8, 2023 6:32 AM in response to trenyce241

Turn off iCloud and Time Machine. Both use a lot of temporary file storage. When you exceed 85% of the system capacity, the system creates constant small swap files to try to cope with the lack of space.

Backup using another utility which gives you more control of when you backup.

Backup now, or forever hold your peace - … - Apple Community

Don't use the internal drive of your Mac for music or photo storage.

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Answer 2

Owl-53

Level 10

103,153 points

Mar 8, 2023 7:18 AM in response to trenyce241

Follow the previous advise first

Only observations - Running Big Sur on a tiny 128 GB Drive issuing to be Challenge at Best

Even If the machine is running only the Stock Apple Application is going to leave very little wiggle some on the drive to store anything meaningful.

Factor in the Photoshop application, IMHO going to Stretch ability of this computer to a very possible dangerous Lack of Space

It is generally a good computer practice to alway keep at least 15% to 20% of the Total Drive Capacity’s as Empty Space. Allowing the computer to drop below these guidelines may eventually, cause unintended consequences which this computer

This would translate into 25.6 GB to 19.2 GB of Empty Space

As an aside - the images above indicate the computer is running Big Sur 11.6.5

The current version is now 11.7.4

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Available storage is 5GB no matter what I do

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