Please help me solve this storage conundrum! MacOS 10.14 Mid-2014 15" Retina MBP

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Please help me solve this storage conundrum! MacOS 10.14 Mid-2014 15" Retina MBP

Hi all

I'm at my wits end here. Have been doing a massive cleanup after getting sudden "disk almost full" messages, with only 400mb showing free. I discovered that OneDrive was doing something crazy - duplicating all my files into a new folder on the drive. I've disabled that, told OneDrive to clear those folders. It seems OS still registers that space as used, although also shows that the actual disk space used is basically nil.

Attached image shows reports from OmniDiskSweep, Daisydisk, and OS System Info.

According to the OS report, there is >100GB free, with my apps+documents totalling about 55GB, but ODS has this at around 73GB (usr+shared combined). The "system storage" is at ±90GB - for the moment, but this keeps fluctuating. While doing that cleanup yesterday the system portion dropped to ±44GB, but this morning had leapt to >110GB, then dropped to the current figure.

However, ODS and DD report ±200GB used and ±46GB free. Trying to install a new software package (which temporarily requires a large amount of free space) fails because it also sees only ±46GB free.

WHAT IS GOING ON?? These numbers are contradictory, and simply don't add up.

Please help, this is driving me nuts. Have tried reindexing, SMC and NVRAM resets, numerous reboots. Emptied trash, or course.

Thanks

Anthony

MacBook Pro 15″

Posted on Jul 2, 2023 1:29 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,843 points

Jul 2, 2023 3:23 AM in response to AntMonster

Tough to tell, But a few suggestions to look at... Have you emptied the trash lately?

You may find neuroanatomist's User Tip helpful: What is "Other" storage on a Mac, and how can I clean it out? - Apple Community.

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)

Look for iOS backups…

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

OmniDiskSweeper shows you the files on your drive, largest to smallest, and lets you quickly Trash or open them.

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/

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

We cannot trust the Storage report as to where the usage really is, especially what “Other” or “system” is…

And apparently Apple has a new way of hiding files & more than a few find out the only way is to Backup, then Erase the Drive, or clone then clone back which seems to leave some huge temporary files behind!?

Carbon Copy Cloner seems to accomplish it...

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

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Answer 2

Jul 5, 2023 2:20 PM in response to AntMonster

FYI, your initial screenshot shows just 46.2GB of free storage space. That is the only value which matters in determining how much storage space is available at that point in time. The "Available" value of 100.4GB is what will become available at some unknown point in the future.....actually once this "Available" space if released, you will only acquire another 54.2GB of free space since the "Available" value already includes the current "Free" space value.

Unfortunately Apple makes this a bit confusing the way macOS displays this information.

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Answer 3

AntMonster Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 2, 2023 7:12 AM in response to BDAqua

Yes, I do agree it's something in the OS that's going awry. It's just bizarre that the file system reports 100GB free space but space analysis apps and installers are seeing half of that.

A fresh install may be the best solution, but I have a new 1TB upgrade drive on the way. Unfortunately it's going to be a couple months til I get it (logistics!) I also need to upgrade the OS. It is not something I was planning on doing before getting the new drive, because that would mean re-installing everything twice. But at the same time, this is becoming painful and I can't install this new software.

If I use CCC to create a clone, can I update the OS before restoring? Or does it make more sense to update and then restore from a Time Machine backup?

And talking of updates, any views on installing Big Sur to this machine? That's the latest (and highest) compatible OS afaik.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

250,843 points

Jul 2, 2023 5:16 AM in response to AntMonster

I think it's apple doing it, if you have an external drive, use CCC to clone it, missing space is back on the very bootable clone.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,843 points

Jul 2, 2023 2:51 PM in response to AntMonster

If you clone using CCC, you shouldn't need to reinstall much if anything.

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Answer 6

AntMonster Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 2, 2023 4:31 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks BDAqua

Yes, trash is empty
.documentsrevision folder is already empty (0 bytes) according to OmniDiskSweeper
Don't have any iOS devices, so no backups
OmniDiskSweeper's breakdown totals about 140GB used, including user & system folders (see screenshot), but it's drive list shows almost 200GB used - this makes no sense, right?
Found 2 local TM snapshots, removed the oldest and rebooted. DaisyDisk and OmniDiskSweeper now show an extra ±6GB free (i.e. now 52GB), BUT OS system still shows a "system" size of almost 90GB - there's been a 400MB drop, and a similar increase in available space - this is a relatively negligible difference, and doesn't correlate with the 6GB change in DD and ODS, and certainly a snapshot is larger than 400MB

OmniDiskSweeper's size count for system folders is WAY less than 90GB - I can search as long as I like and simply can't find anything that size to clean up. What's confounding is that its own tallies don't match up.

I have a feeling that OneDrive has completely screwed up the indexing or something, leaving "ghost files" behind. See the next screenshot of that folder in Finder as an example. 258MB (it was many, many gigabytes larger yesterday) but 856KB "on disk".

Much thanks for your time!

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Answer 7

AntMonster Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 2, 2023 11:21 AM in response to BDAqua

Just another update: a new version of OmniDiskSweep was just released, so I ran it to see if maybe it comes up with something different. Unfortunately not, Omni result (in the background) found 140GB data, but the Drive List still shows 197.3GB used. That's a 60GB discrepancy, and I just have no idea how to locate the problem and free that space.

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Answer 8

AntMonster Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 3, 2023 2:22 AM in response to BDAqua

Sure, I understand that. But seeing that I want to update the OS anyway, is CCC the best way to go? I imagine that restoring from a clone involves re-formatting the drive, and re-installing the same OS from the clone. Would like to mitigate any downtime.

I also noticed this today: after a fresh shut down/reboot or restart, the free space is listed as 51gb. It is only after going to system storage info that it updates to say ±100gb free.

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Answer 9

BDAqua

Level 10

250,843 points

Jul 3, 2023 6:50 AM in response to AntMonster

I imagine that restoring from a clone involves re-formatting the drive, and re-installing the same OS from the clone. Would like to mitigate any downtime.

As far as downtime you can keep working whilst the clone is happening, & then boot from the clone, continue working whilst cloning back, then the the only downtime will be Upgrading the OS.

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Answer 10

AntMonster Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 6, 2023 2:11 AM in response to HWTech

Indeed, it is rather misleading. I'd really like to know how macOS can bloat like that and take >35% of available hard disk space (if not more) with no way to purge or manage or assess it. I'm going to wait for the new SSD then do a fresh install of OS 12, hopefully resolves the matter relatively easily. Thanks for your reply!

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Answer 11

BDAqua

Level 10

250,843 points

Jul 3, 2023 3:00 AM in response to AntMonster

Well. see legacy clone, I think that is best way myself since it doesn't look loke Apple is going to let on on the missing mysteries...

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-macos-system-volumes-apple-software-restore

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Please help me solve this storage conundrum! MacOS 10.14 Mid-2014 15" Retina MBP

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