I'm doing some housekeeping on my late 2013 6 core MacPro with Sierra. In the Storage tab on About This Mac it shows System (yellow) as 228.78gb in size which just seems extraordinarily large to my relatively uninformed self. I have 2 questions.
1) Is 228.78gb a reasonable size for an OS or am I misinterpreting what I'm seeing
2) If this an unreasonable size how/where can I reduce it?
Thanks in advance
Eric
Mac Pro (Late 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12.2)
Re-index the drive: Spotlight- How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support. The display is not reliable unless the drive has been re-indexed.
There is no such thing as a normal "system" size since it varies widely from user to user. If you need to clear files from the drive then see this:
How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive
My advice is to stay away from system files and never delete files unless you know what they are for.
Re-index the drive: Spotlight- How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support. The display is not reliable unless the drive has been re-indexed.
There is no such thing as a normal "system" size since it varies widely from user to user. If you need to clear files from the drive then see this:
How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive
My advice is to stay away from system files and never delete files unless you know what they are for.
Open a Finder window, select the startup disk, then Click while holding the CTL key, select Getinfo form the contextual menu that pops up.
In the getinfo window look at the GneralInfo, available, used, and Capacity.
These figures are real. Same question?
Thanks Kappy for the multiple suggestions. I did re-index my spotlight db as you suggested and strangely the size of the system went up about 10gb. I read through all of your suggestions (all good ones) and tinkered where appropriate without really changing much.
What I've figured out (or at least hypothesise) is that System in the get info or storage tab of About this Mac is not the same as my system folder, the actual OS. I couldn't see how someone could have a 230gb system file or nobody could ever use a mac with for example a 250gb drive which I think Apple still sells in cheaper macs. So I checked my actual system folder and (duh) and its orders of magnitude smaller, roughly 8gb.
What I've come to realise is that System in the About My Mac tab actually includes things like my music in the iTunes library (not the streaming stuff from Apple Music but the stuff I've burned from CD). It also seems to include iBooks books and pdfs and movies/home videos, etc. That makes much more sense to me now and I checked this hypothesis by deleting some iBooks from my mac and sure enough the System on the About My Mac tab was reduced an appropriate amount. I have a fair number of videos I burned in iTunes and I assume that accounts for a bunch of the 230gb the system reads at.
Thanks for your time
atb
Thanks for trying to help Lexiepex. I think I figured out what is going on and put that in my reply to Kappy above (or below?)
Eric
System size in About This Mac
