MacOS Sierra - 50-100GB of system storage??

I spent over an hour chatting with support about having over 300GB in system storage. They tested many things but after the chat I found that the system was still recognizing my old MacBook via iCloud. You can edit devices under system preferences. Once I deleted my old laptop the problem was solved.

Hi Karl,

That does seem high. When you go through the about this Mac then do manage storage what are the items consuming most of the space?

Removing the time machine backups.

I did the OmniDiskSweeper both launching the application and through the terminal via sudo and the results were the same and both did not show the TimeMachine backps.

I followed the instructions regarding removing the TimeMachine backups and deleted one snapshot as a test and it worked so I cleared the remaining items. I was confident that I had a recent backup completed. I would probably suggest or encourage a backup is complete before manually deleting the snapshots just in case.

Hi petey2428,

I would use Disk Cartography. It's an app directly from the AppStore.

Disk Cartography - clever disk space analyzer on the Mac App Store

-Oliver

Girshon Rutstein wrote:

OmniDiscSweeper and I found 522.5GB Private out of which 479GB was Bluetooth thousands of PocketLoggerBluetooth, how do I delete them?

Those logs are in /var/log/Bluetooth/

You should be able to delete the log files from there, but you will probably have to authenticate with an admin user.

Was it removing local Time Machine backups or using OmniDiskSweeper via the terminal?

My friend has a mid-2012 MacBook Pro with a 750GB hard drive. His storage is almost all system. He doesn't use Photos, iTunes or any other storage gobbling apps. just mainly Word. His HDD is so full I can't even install any type of app cleaner to get rid of files. I didn't get a chance to look at all of his system, but something is causing the computer to fill up the HDD. He's running Sierra 10.12.1.

My friend did the safe boot and then rebooted. He said initially he gained back several gigs of HDD space but the system files just growing again. Very perplexing. I will try a search for large files. As I’ve mentioned he doesn’t have any video, audio or photos on the computer. I may have him boot into recovery mode and reinstall. He doesn’t have any way to back up his computer.

There are many reasons the System files can be that large. You might have to explore to make the determiniation as to which are not needed.

System files include things like the Apps, all the back up files and including the files for syncing across multiple devices.

Lest we forget, it is also where al ot of the internet bloatware is stored.

I am facing the same problem. I just bought a new 2017 macbook air new model with 128gb ssd and let me tell you, when I was in sierra, the system was taking around 6-7 gb but now it is taking around 38gb in high sierra and it keeps getting increase. I have found that whenever I delete anything on my mac and then empty my trash, the storage of the trash gets added to the system files. for example- if I have my system files of 38gb now and my trash has 500mb of files, by emptying the trash, this 500mb will get added to 38gb and will become 38.5gb and nothing will increase in the free space.

I have also contacted apple care and have talked to the senior advisors and they have asked for a 4 days time to consult their engineering team and then they will reply to me on 3 October,2017.

please reply to me if anyone has this same problem.

If you select the file showing in OmniDiskSweeper there is a "delete" option. I seem to remember it's in the bottom left corner.

I faced the same problem just today and I think it can be resolved rather easily. I am writing this post as I solve it for my mac.

basis: Mac OS X is built on unix. I don't have a ready-to-use script, but it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes:

$ sudo du -x -h -d 1 /

You should see where most space is used, in my case /usr and /Users are each consuming more than 60G. /Users are my files that I would clean up later, so I will focus on /usr first.

$ sudo du -x -h -d 1 /usr

And subsequently add subfolders that consume most space. You will reach the root cause pretty quickly with this. My problem was cassandra data and I have moved the commit logs to a different partition, though if I didn't have that choice, I would make Cassandra use an external disk.

If you can't understand where it's used for a folder, just try for example (it wasn't required in my case):

$ ls -lhS /usr/local/var/lib/cassandra/commitlog/

This should work in all cases, and would also work on linux as it always has since a couple of decades ago 😝

I have a brand new late 2016 non touch bar MacBook Pro, after clearing it of all unnecessary programs and installing, logic, MainStage, pro tools, Ableton, and some other programs my system folder now measures 136gb. This makes zero sense. 136gb of a 250gb macbook using system files that can't be accessed by clicking on "manage" under about this Mac.

In my case(1) nether omnidisksweeper nor Disk Inventory X couldn't find the files which take volume.

Also DaisyDisk can find them but they where hidden and there was no access to them. (Access needs Stand-Alone version of DaisyDisk)

(1): My available Storage remains about 90 GB but System size increasing every day.

I've read the responses to this issue and tried the suggestions and something still isn't correct.

I have an early 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina display. I have a 512Gb HD. I partitioned it out with 128Gb for Bootcamp and the remaining 375Gb to macOS 10.13.

When I check storage it shows that it is almost full with about 285Gb being used for System.

I dowloaded OmniDiskSweeper and did a sweep of my Macintosh HD partition and it doesn't add up or show where the System is taking up all this space.

So I'm still in a situation where something is taking up all my available storage and it's not showing.

I've also done the reindexing by adding and removing my Macintosh HD partition in Spotlight and it didn't resolve anything.

I'll continue to do research but this is troubling. Anyhelp would be appreciated... Thanks...