You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Why does the system use 150 GB of storage?

Dear all,

hope you can help me with this one

I just updated to Sierra from Mountain Lion on my 2013 Mac Book Pro (2.6, 8GB) I'm not happy as many of the Adobe CS6 do not work with this system, I wanted el Capitan but couldn't find it anywhere...

My main concern is why the system takes up over 150 GB of space and how can I minimise it.

I don't like using iCloud, I do backups and move files onto external hard drives.

thank you for your help

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OSX 10.8.5

Posted on Oct 18, 2016 8:08 AM

35 replies

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Oct 18, 2016 9:06 AM in response to ewastern

Do not trust the storage dialog box you are using, it can often be wrong.

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Oct 18, 2016 9:14 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

just checked :-) no actually it's just System

so my question would be what is that System? and why does it use so much space?

Csound1

Level 9

60,033 points

Oct 18, 2016 9:17 AM in response to ewastern

Yes it is

here

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Oct 18, 2016 9:30 AM in response to Csound1

THANK YOU!

I wish I asked here before, when I went to Apple Store it only offered Sierra

have a great day

Oct 18, 2016 10:45 AM in response to ewastern

Where are you getting this information from? Is this a system utility or third party application?

I don't recall seeing this kind of list.

FWIW, the storage information on my mac shows only 48GB used for "system". That is from the usual (Apple menu)-->About this Mac->Storage:

SiHancox

Level 5

4,953 points

Oct 18, 2016 10:53 AM in response to ewastern

You could check this thread, sounds like a similar issue MacOS Sierra - 50-100GB of system storage??

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Oct 18, 2016 11:13 AM in response to SiHancox

Thank you, this does not answer my question though

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Oct 18, 2016 11:17 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

you get that when you press "Manage"

Obviously there is something wrong with my system, just saw in another thread that while installing Sierra moves and stores bunch of stuff deemed not usable in this system, if it's true... hard to say.

SiHancox

Level 5

4,953 points

Oct 18, 2016 12:02 PM in response to ewastern

Sorry, thought you where asking why your System area might be so large following the up grade - the similar issue thread does contain the following:

"....Only thought is the upgrade process sometimes moves files into a folder that it deems not compatible with the new system...".

This folder might be the reason your System is so large - see this About incompatible software on your Mac - Apple Support for more info, so to answer your last question, "if it's true...", I would say yes it could be - you just need to find the folder.

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Oct 18, 2016 12:17 PM in response to SiHancox

Yes you are right, thank you!

Thank you for that other article. However, the only incompatible software was Apple Qmaster.prefPane, which is 1,5 MB, I just checked.

SiHancox

Level 5

4,953 points

Oct 18, 2016 1:05 PM in response to ewastern

So if you don't have any incompatible put-aside Apps the only other thought is cache or size reporting issue - have you tried rebooting into Safe mode by holding down the shift key when restarting. It apparently carries out some basic house keeping so when you boot back normally you might get some recovered disc space back.

Note, booting in Safe mode is somewhat slower than normal so give it time - that's all I can think of because the help menu for storage doesn't give much away (see below).

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Oct 18, 2016 1:29 PM in response to SiHancox

Thank you! I will do that.

ewastern Author

Level 1

38 points

Oct 19, 2016 1:04 AM in response to ewastern

Hi everyone, thank you for all your tips and suggestions. I have rebooted into safe mode but that have saved me only 10GB.

So, I contacted the Apple service (by phone) and told them about my 150GB system storage. We used the DaisyDisk scan (which the agent highly recommended) and found tons of Adobe Cache (70GB! mainly in After Effects that I never use), which we then erased.

So all is well that ends well.

Wishing you a great day!

Dec 17, 2016 5:57 AM in response to ewastern

In my case I use Android SDK Images. Each image is about 20GB. DaisyDisk helped me to identify these images within the "System" structure. It was enough to remove the unnecessary images that the size of the "System" returned to normal.

Feb 4, 2017 12:02 AM in response to ewastern

Have a look here CS6 works 😉

https://blog.conradchavez.com/2016/06/16/macos-10-12-sierra-will-adobe-software- work/

Why does the system use 150 GB of storage?