System Storage Taking Up Way Too Much Space in macOS Sierra

I want to thank you for freeing up 120gigs on my Mac.... This was the easiest and less intrusive way to free up space. I purchased the Mac Used and had two other owners stuff stored on the hard drive...

Mahalo

I had an incredible 400GB used by the System with only 67GB free on my 750GB drive. This was aggravating, as I had been moving data off to my backup drive as well as deleting stuff left-and-right. All my hard work was going to "the System". A little sleuthing pointed to TimeMachine as a potential issue. I plugged in my backup drive, started TimeMachine backup and it immediately jumped to 237GB freeing up a ton of space. There is an article on how-to-geek that has more you can do at the shell to clean up TimeMachine even more. Link: How to Free Up Space Used By Time Machine’s Local Backups on Your Mac

Mine was using nearly a TB in System. After time with support and much googling, I believe to have resolved it; at least for my case.

If you are using the new file system, APFS, the Time Machine local snapshots show up as used space in system. These should show as purgeable and will automatically clear themselves as needed to clear up space. So far, the only way I found to see these files is using the command 'tmutil listlocalsnapshots' and it doesn't show the sizes. It shows a list of snapshots which each look like com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-20-014617. I deleted several of these using a command like this for each 'tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2017-12-20-014617' and that reduced my used disk space and the disk space in system to what I expected.

This turned out to be from core files on my system.

If it happens to you, delete files from /core:

# Remove core files

sudo rm /core/*

Enter your password if prompted.

It is safe to delete these core files: they are copies of the memory from programs that crashed. They are useful for developers to debug issues.

For good measure, also add the following to your .bashrc or equivalent:

# Limit core files to 10 MB at most

ulimit -c 10000000

By default, that would be where your stuff gets stored. On some newer versions, you have an option to look for large files that you might want to delete. If you are showing the hard drive on the left side on the finder (probably named something like Macintosh HD) you can right-click it and select "Manage Storage". The dialog that comes up will show the different areas like Documents. Click on Documents or messages or whatever folder is of interest, and it will show you the large files. Another way to get to this tool is to click the apple in the top left of the screen and select "About This Mac", then in the dialog that pops up, click Storage on the top of the dialog and then click the button "Manage"

Just ran into this, too. Some was TM snapshots, but the real issue seems to be the way that HS Sys info is calculating "System":

When I run Sysinfo from my lean admin account, I get 410 GB "System" (Uggh). When I run it from my everyday user account, I get 220 GB "System" (now WHAT?).

As my iMac is multi-account, I have Photos and Lightroom DB in the Shared folder (close to 400 GB). Photos is about 190 GB in the System-Photo-DB... which Sysinfo shows as "Pictures" in my everyday user account... but not from my admin account (where I have not set up Photos)...

If I do the math, it kind-of stacks up and shows a user-confuser style of counting in Sysinfo. Apple: this is NOT the integrity of user-friendly systems I pay for, this is undergraduate level programming... but maybe they have the more competent staff engaged in tax evasion programming....

My System storage is 600+ gig Atm it’s driving me nuts.

Everything I delete goes to system 😡

I just moved the whole photos folder to a external HD, deleted it of the Mac, emptied the trash and reboot. Did sweet f all just increased the system folder.

Been on the phone with Apple support for 3 weeks. No one can suss it out. Any ideas ??? Thanks in advance 😊

One thing I noticed is that any large change in what is on the disk will cause a large increase in the time machine local snapshots which show in that system space. It should show as recoverable, but you can verify whe

(Continued) if you are using time machine, you can verify without turning time machine off by deleting a few of those local snapshots as described in my post above. Delete a couple of them from a time just after when you made a big change like moving photos and see what it shows.

I have this problem too, and at the most inopportune time!

I've been trying to write my WIP High Fantasy novel and what's taking up most of my space?

82.74 of System Space!

This is so infuriating, especially for a writer. 😠

I have no idea how I'll be able to purge it, I know nothing of caches, so I'm too afraid to delete any.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

If you aren’t getting warnings about not having enough room to save your work, then you probably don’t have anything to worry about, but you can check one thing to be sure. When you look at the drive’s space, does it show you how much is purgeable? Any amount of space that is purgeable is available to use, because the system will automatically purge that and use it when your drive gets low on space. But if there is no purgeable space and your available space gets low, then you need to do something.

Hey how are you ?

Sorry I can’t give you any help, just let u know my experience !!

Maybe a little. Download a program Malwarebytes and do a scan. I found a thing called jdi back up and deleted it but I think it was to late.

I have had the best Apple technician on the phone for hours I mean hours probably 6-7 hours in two days. The fine man went through every folder on the Mac and for the life of us we could not find where all this storage was going. I’m up to 990 Gb on system storage and every time I delete something over it goes. To cut a long story short I’m pulling everything of the Mac on to an external HD and wiping the operating system then reinstalling it. I think this is the only way to go. This is the fourth technician and buy far the best. This guy was excited about trying to fix this issue, like it was a challenge for him. Hats of to Apple. Awesome support.

I can’t remember his name but I will post it tomorrow when I speak to him. If anyone can fix it this dude can 😀

Very serious problem indeed!

My system storage jumped from approximately 30GB to 75GB. I was clearing some space in iTunes and other useless app and everything became untouchable system files!

I might have been able to solve the issue by going to ~/Library/caches using Go To Folder and deleting the cache files that were created today, as I was clearing space in my MAC.

Weird stuff, took the best part of my day from me!

I just got off the phone with Apple Care with the same problem. I’ve Googled this problem and spent too much time on the phone with Apple trying to figure it out.

I don’t know if this is the solution yet...I’m still waiting for the Time Machine to finish it’s backup...but the Care rep I spoke to thinks the 9 days of local snapshots my computer was storing because my external drive was not attached was taking up all the extra space showing up under system.

Does this sound like it could be your problem?

I’ll update as I learn more. I sure hope the solution has finally been uncovered!

Right! That’s the problem. The Time Machine’s idea of “low” and mine are two different things. It just kept storing snapshots because I had a bit of storage left. It got to the point I couldn’t back up my phone because it took up so much space.

I can report once I did the Time Machine backup the hard drive stats went back to normal and I was able to backup my phone.

I’d say problem solved.