When I returned to my mac at night, I got the notification that my startup disk is full. Coming to check, I saw that the "system" is taking nearly 155GB of storage. I have tried searching the entire drive for large files, but did not come across anything other than what classifies as "documents".
MacBook Air, macOS Sierra (10.12)
All the answers seems to focus on how to see files - but noone addresses the problem.
Was it ever solved?
Did you ever find a solution to this problem?
Try re-indexing Macintosh HD.
Storage categories shown are based on Spotlight index.
This will take a while. Wait until it is finished.
System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
Download from the Internet OmniDiskSweeper and Grand Perspective (both free) and open them. They will show all of your files and the respective sizes.
Transfer to an external HDD the files you do not want on your Mac or delete them.
Do not forget to empty trash. Only then is space allocated for additional data.
https://www.omnigroup.com/more
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
Ciao.
That didn't help, but thanks.
The problem is not my files, I only have about 60GB of files in the entire "Users" folder, and the rest is taken by the system. None of the 155GB of files showed up in either Finder or those apps. Also, trash is already empty.
The point of running the applications that I listed will show you what you actually have on your MBA. That particular display is not to be trusted due to an apparent bug in the program. In addition, a Spotlight reindex does not always correct the display.
Ciao.
I'm sorry, if there's something I'm missing, could you point it out?
Both applications will tell you what you have on your MBA. If you click on a category in the ODS application, you will get a breakdown of that particular category. If you keep on doing it, you will eventually arrive at the smallest elements so a given file. You yourself should be able to determine if there is something missing by comparing with the file via Finder. here is the output from my MBP:
Ciao.
As I showed in my previous reply, there is nothing to be found in ODS, other than exactly the files I expect. In fact, ODS shows only 101GB used, while finder/disk utility shows 227GB used, more than double of what files I can see in ODS are.
That is the point, ODS is accurate, that display is not.
Ciao.
Update: It seems that it is still increasing, (rapidly).
Run ODS as root per these instructions by WZZZ:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4159295?tstart=0
This will show all files including the ones that one cannot see. You must do this as administrator.
DO NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES WHILE ODS IS RUNNING AS ROOT!
Ciao
System taking up 155GB of storage?
