Something's eating my hd space

Question

Level 1

12 points

Something's eating my hd space

My macbook pro 2023 is loosing hd space on its own and I have tried different troublshooting, it has slowed down. Does anyone know how to fix this?

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 27.0

Posted on Sep 27, 2026 4:08 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Allan Jones

Level 10

84,730 points

Sep 27, 2026 9:16 AM in response to sigrun16

I agree 100% with Kaz-k regarding trying a Safe Mode boot. I'll add that for potential disk/drive issues, I found that letting the computer "sit" in Safe Mode for 20-30 minutes without taking any other action gives Safe Mode time to do its appointed housekeeping. Only then to I do a normal restart.

I found if I restart immediately instead, Safe Mode does not do much.

Thanks to Grant Bennet-Alder for that tip.

How big is your drive, and what does System Settings > General > About > Storage show for what is using your space? Example for a 1TB Macbook Pro drive:

Reply

Answer 2

kaz-k

Level 9

53,086 points

Sep 27, 2026 8:53 AM in response to sigrun16

Hi,

Try to startup in Safe mode, then normal boot which could solve your issue.

Start up your Mac in safe mode – Apple Support (UK)

Reply

Answer 3

sigrun16 Author

Level 1

12 points

Sep 27, 2026 12:29 PM in response to Allan Jones

Thank you. I tried leaving the computer in safe mode for 30 minutes. I got some space back but it keeps going down on its own. It's 500 gb. I have right now 93 gb on the internal hd (with almost no files at all, just app, was 143 gb yesterday). System data is taken 257.48 gb.

My internal hd actually went down to almost 1 gb yesterday and I trashed almost all the files that I had and got up to 12 gb back and then deleted about 80 gb of mobile files from an old iphone (not used for 2 years). I was using backblaze backup yesterday and had an external hd attached that I had to disconnect and paused backup. I have since uninstalled the app incase something was still going on in the background. It seems to have helped somewhat but seems System data shouldn't be taken so much space.

Reply