Majority of storage space taken up by "Other" - have managed to increase to 10GB but receiving the above message now. I have tried absolutely every recommendation to free up storage but can't touch "Other" - why not?
MacBook Pro 13″
Which problem should we advise on first, the size of "Other" or the installation failure?
Many thanks for the reply. Is it possible that the two problems could be related? I have been trying to resolve the problem of losing storage on my MacBook Pro (late 2013) for some time - nothing I have tried through Apple support seems to stop the storage reducing and I just can't find anything else that I have access to to delete. See screenshot below regarding 'other'.
I thought that 10GB of space would be sufficient to install the latest update to Big Sur but got the message as above. I can see that others have had problems with 'other' taking up more and more storage and hoped that someone would have a solution before I make the long trek to the nearest Apple Store!
Thanks again for any help..... Best wishes
The ultimate problem is you have a small disk by today's standards.
Using Finder, click the Macintosh drive, select Get Info and check the size of Purgeable. If you've deleted a large block of data, macOS may sequester the space as Purgeable.
If Purgeable is small, then your problem is elsewhere.
You need to have a certain amount of space to install the OS. I can tell you less than 10GB is way to little. IIRC it's more like 39GB.
Thank you Ku4hx for taking the time to reply. I did what you suggest and found only 138MB of purgeable material which doesn't really help me. Whilst this MacBook Pro is old and the disk small by current standards we ask very little of it and I believe that there is nothing else I can remove to open up more storage. i.e. MacHD this am looks like this: flash storage 251GB: iOS files 12.49 GB: Apps 2.64 GB: System 15.33: OTHER 156.14 GB (and growing ) Available 9.93 GB. My current material does not even register on the scale as most stuff resides on iCloud! I can see that other people have asked the question of how to reduce OTHER but have yet to come across a solution - is it built-in obsolescence? (That's my husband's opinion!) Even with an even larger HD if OTHER is not contained it will eventually fill that! So, armed with a recent external disk backup, next step is to visit the Apple Store. I'm very grateful for your input - sorry we couldn't solve the problem.
Best wishes, Joan
When trying to install update to Big Sur 11...... I get this message "Current device configuration and target are invalid for installation in the current state. Please try again"
