User profile for user: grumpyoldman2
grumpyoldman2 Author
User level: Level 1
52 points

Why is my MacMini always full? System Settings/General/Storage Lies!

System Settings/General/Storage says my Mac Mini has,


Mac HD (int 256Gb) 36.57Gb used of 245.11Gb

JohnD (ext 1Tb) 791.57Gb used of 1Tb

JohnDMacMiniBackup (ext 2Tb) 992.69Gb used of 2Tb


In a terminal window as root,


df -H


<<See Additional text!!! >> ARG this is so frustrating!


System Settings/General/Storage lies!


I'm also trying du from cron & getting this...

du: /Volumes/JohnD/johnd/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data: Operation not permitted

 44K /Volumes/JohnD/johnd/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd

du: /Volumes/JohnD/johnd/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/: Operation not permitted


Needless to say /Volumes/JohnD/johnd/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd/Data is

full of crap I really don't want happening on this machine!!!

Mac mini, macOS 15.2

Posted on Jan 19, 2025 4:45 AM

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User profile for user: grumpyoldman2
grumpyoldman2 Author
User level: Level 1
52 points

Jan 19, 2025 5:01 PM in response to Ronasara

OK, thanks.

But that is an incredibly sad indictment on current Apple software.


Personally I find that du/df are most accurate, allowing for the obtuse permissions.


Hopefully there will be more info emanating from someone in apple, but I understand that is

somewhat unlikely here.


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User profile for user: woodmeister50
woodmeister50
User level: Level 7
20,707 points

Jan 20, 2025 5:29 AM in response to grumpyoldman2

To actually see where and what items are taking up space there are two free apps you can use and both are free.


The first is Omni Disk Sweeper which will scan your disk and give you a simple hierarchical text listing of the items that are using space.


The second is an app called Grand Perspective which gives you a graphical view of what is taking up space. Clicking in different areas of it will expand to those areas and so forth.


You can look and using these apps and see specifically what is using space and get back to us with the largest of the items and perhaps we can shed some light on what is going on what can and cannot be removed. Keep in mind what you are looking for are items that take up gigabytes of space. There might be directories with lots of files but actually do not use up a lot of space, i.e, a directory with 20,000 files but the files are only 1 or 2 KB are not what you are looking for.


FWIW, I use Omni Disk Sweeper to scan my drives every now and then when I decide I need to do some house cleaning: finding things left behind by apps I no longer use, old libraries of previous versions of apps, etc. Note, this is not one of those "automatic" cleaning apps and items are manually removed by the user, which should know what they are doing before doing so.



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User profile for user: grumpyoldman2
grumpyoldman2 Author
User level: Level 1
52 points

Feb 9, 2025 6:48 PM in response to grumpyoldman2


It's a Miracle!

Apple have descended from the Ivory tower & fixed it!

Albeit days after an update to 15.3


It gets better!

They have even fixed (for a while I'd expect - but don't bet on it!) df & du to show more

accurate data about space usage. The person in Apple that actually did this deserves

accolades!


df...

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on

/dev/disk3s1s1245G 11G 174G 7% /

/dev/disk3s5 245G 52G 174G 23% /System/Volumes/Data

/dev/disk8s1 1000G 769G 231G 77% /Volumes/MyHome

/dev/disk7s2 2000G 993G 1007G 50% /Volumes/MyMacMiniBackup


du -shx WhatImInterestedIn...

23G /Volumes/MyHome/me/Library/Containers/com.apple.mediaanalysisd

9.0G /Volumes/MyHome/me/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/


Those are not unreasonable numbers - at least I'm happy with them for now!


Please convey my congratulations to the person in Apple that fixed these problems

that should never have happened & we look forward to better communication with

Apple & improvement in their technical support...


Who have 2 options for all problems,


Reboot


Log off removing all iCloud sync, then log back in.


Sorry there's a third now, total reinstall!


They really do not work!

Good programming does!


Analysis of all cache files is required - please get the software engineers (another name for

programmers) on to it, it's called appropriate maintenance!


Do not assume that 3rd party stuff & community user advice will solve bad programming

practice!


Thanks for listening (at last)


It's appreciated when it happens!


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Why is my MacMini always full? System Settings/General/Storage Lies!

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