1 TB of storage is disappearing periodically

My MacBook Air is running Sonoma 14.4.1 and has 2 TB of internal storage, of which 1.4 TB is typically free. Occasionally, sometimes after a few days, sometimes after a few weeks, free storage drops, sometimes to less than 1 GB. This can happen when I'm not using the laptop at all. Usually the storage magically returns when I restart the laptop. Today, free storage is down from 1.4 TB to 0.4 TB, and restarting the laptop doesn't free up any space.

How can I discover what's causing this behavior, and stop it?

Thanks.

T.J.

MacBook Air (M2, 2023)

Posted on May 7, 2024 8:22 PM

Top-ranking reply

Tesserax

Level 10

160,740 points

Posted on May 7, 2024 9:04 PM

I'd start by looking at Apple Logo > About This Mac > General > About > Storage Settings ... This should give you a breakdown of the category of items that are currently being stored on your Mac's internal drive.

One of the biggest contributors to using storage space (temporarily) is Time Machine local snapshots. These are typically found under the System Data category. Based on what you are describing, I'm guessing this is worth looking into for the cause.

If you want to get into the technical details, you may find the following article an interesting read:

https://eclecticlight.co/2023/04/27/where-does-macos-get-its-volume-free-space-figures-from/

View in context

1 TB of storage is disappearing periodically

Similar questions