What is System Data? It's taking up 235.5 GB on my 500 GB M1 iMac. Can I delete it? After a restart I have around 2 GB available.

Question

What is System Data? It's taking up 235.5 GB on my 500 GB M1 iMac. Can I delete it? After a restart I have around 2 GB available.

my latest mac is an 500 GB iMac M1 2021 currently running 13.3.1 with fixed 8GB memory.

I'm getting requests to force quit multiple programs because I'm out of memory. I'm emptying the trash but there's not that much. After a restart I have around 2GB available.

My 2018 2 TB Time Capsule won't back even though its got 824MB of free space. The time capsule is having problems which is for a different time.

I now have a 4 TB WD Mybook but I don't want to put GB's of stuff that I probably should not keep, let alone even needing them. I'm not ready to transfer any of my MacBook files until I clean up the iMac or this problem will happen in the future. Buying bigger storage systems shouldn't be the solution.

So I need to get rid of useless unnecessary files before I back up again.

When I upgraded to a new mac I followed the instructions I believe to transfer old mac programs, files, etc to the new one every time. Mark's MacBook Pro (2) was my second pro, and last one before going to the iMac.

So I've got Macintosh HD as a volume of Macintosh HD which is located at Mark's MacBook Pro (2).

Is that the problem?

If so, how do i fix it?

What is System Data?

Thank you.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Aug 8, 2023 5:39 PM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

152,013 points

Aug 10, 2023 8:09 AM in response to mark from lake elsinore

Since macOS Monterey, the 'Other' category got renamed to 'System Data.'

Regardless, the following post should answer your question on what this category consists of:

What is "Other" and What Can I Do About I… - Apple Community

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Answer 2

padams35

Level 4

3,445 points

Aug 9, 2023 5:17 AM in response to mark from lake elsinore

To view data use in finder:

Open finder an press cmd+shift+. (to view hidden files)
View -> Show View Options -> check 'Calculate all sizes'
Navigate to Macintosh HD and wait a few minutes for directory size calculations to complete.
Navigate down through suspiciously large directories to find your data hog(s).
Post more questions about what you find and if it can be safely deleted or better managed.

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Answer 3

Aug 9, 2023 6:10 PM in response to padams35

Thank you but I haven't solved the problem yet.

I looked at Macintosh HD buy didn't find the memory hog "System Data" 235.9 GB.

I find that sum of the other categories of storage (256GB) are more than the system data. Added to system data is about the total memory of my HD 500 GB HD of 495GB.

When I open Macintosh HD I don't see "System Data" I have to do a search and I get the following result.

After about counting 200 "SystemData" folders I stopped counting. However, every SystemData folder I opened was empty . Also the folders in the "Containers" folder all had different titles and the same 2 sub folders "Data" and "SystemData" with nothing in "SystemData."

I haven't found a 236GB folder "SystemData" that I could delete. Please let me know if the screen shots are helpful or not.

Thanks

Mark

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Answer 4

padams35

Level 4

3,445 points

Aug 10, 2023 6:09 AM in response to mark from lake elsinore

Hmm. In Finder go to View -> View Options and make sure 'size' is checked along with 'calculate all sizes'

I was expecting you to see something like this.

In my example my Systems folder is a reasonable 28.5GB, but I have accumulated 89.2GB in 'Applications'. Expanding Applications shows the biggest offender is 52.5GB claimed by GuildWars2... which discontinued Mac support back in 2021... and which I will now delete to double my free space.

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

210,449 points

Aug 10, 2023 2:49 PM in response to mark from lake elsinore

The Other category is a potpourri of files which can include:

• System temporary files

• macOS system folders

• Archives and disk images (.zip, .iso, etc. - often found in the Downloads folder)

• Personal user data

• Files from the user’s library (Application Support, iCloud files, screensavers, etc.)

• Cache files: browser, Mail

• Mail messages & attachments

• Fonts, plugins, extensions

• Safari reading list

• iTunes backups

• Crud resulting from jailbreaking your iDevice

• Game data

• Saved data files

• Call history

• Notes

• Media

• Voice memos

• Other files that are not recognized by a Spotlight search

• Media files that cannot be classified by Spotlight as a media file because they are located inside of a package

• Files created and modified by other user accounts on your Mac.

They can be located anywhere on your hard drive.

The files that you have control over are located in the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music and Movies folders. You can use this free app, GrandPerspective, to find the largest files on your drive so you can determine if they can be deleted or moved to an external HD for storage.

Note: you can empty the Downloads folder after the apps and/or updates that were downloaded have been installed or applied. Some users have found a couple of Gigabytes of files in their Downloads folder which are no longer needed.