215GB System Data

Hi there,

My 2017 Macbook pro is constantly full, despite the fact I have almost nothing on there.

Whenever I clear large amounts of data it immediately refills to less than 10GB remaining.

Currently I have managed to get to 24GB remaining, however System data appears to take up 215GB of the total 250GB.

I have taken many people's advice in looking through the two seperate library folders, system folder etc. and I still cannot find what's taking up space as they're not very big and nothing within stands out. I've tried searching for iPhone backups and local TimeMachine backups and also have nothing.

Any ideas? I'm still running Mojave 10.14.6 and want to update but I can't because I don't have enough space.

Posted on Mar 1, 2024 1:02 AM

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HWTech

Community+ 2026

Level 9

75,026 points

Posted on Mar 1, 2024 5:25 PM

You can use OmniDiskSweeper to look for the largest files/folders.

If the drive keeps filling up, then it sounds like you may have cloud file syncing or some other app that is downloading files such as a bittorrent client. Maybe turn off WiFi to see if that stops the drive from filling up.

I hope you have a good backup since you could lose access to the data on this drive if it completely runs out of Free storage space (ignore the "Available" space value since it is misleading & not immediately available for use) due to how the APFS file system works.

Check to see if there are any APFS snapshots which can be deleted which can free up some of the storage space. I think the only way to do this in Mojave is by using the command line, but I'll provide the Apple instructions as well just in case.

View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/reclaiming-drive-space-by-thinning-apple-file-system-snapshot-backups/

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215GB System Data

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