Two hard-drive management questions.

R_55a wrote:

1) The SSD hard drive of my Mac Mini M1 has 60.02 GB available of 245.11 GB. I recall reading that one should not fill up a hard drive. How much capacity of the hard drive should I leave open before the OS becomes impaired?

2) Of the 184.59 GB used on the hard drive, 92.65 GB is System Data. That is 38% of the hard drive taken up by System Data. Does that sound about right? If it is too high, I am thinking that I could delete some obsolete or unused applications. But then I would have to figure out how to find and remove the various supporting files in the Library. I have succeeded in doing so with some applications but not all.

If it looks as if I am going to run out of room in this Mac Mini, I could plop a new hard drive into an older Mini that is currently in storage. I could use the old Mini as a supplement to the current primary Mac.

SSD function most efficiently with 15-20 % free storage at all times.

System data is same as Other data — do general house cleaning

How to free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

User tip: "Other and What Can I Do About It ?"

What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how… - Apple Community

you can see the big picture of your storage from the Terminal.app copy and paste:

diskutil list internal

your user data is the < Volume Macintosh HD - Data >