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Level 2

371 points

High Sierra disk space over 120Gb

I apologize in advance for the length and detail of this question. I have been through three AppleCare visits without any workarounds or fixes so I want to kick it to the group with as much detail as possible.

Last weekend, 9/23/17, I worked on my computer (MacBook Pro, Retina, 13", Early 2015, 250 Gb) and another, both under OS 10.12, to try and free up hard drive space that was being taken up by Mail. I mention this only to set the background because I know specifically through doing that how much drive space was available and how much was taken up by System prior to the High Sierra install. Prior to the High Sierra install on 9/25/17 my computer had just over 100Gb available drive space. After installing High Sierra there is between 39 and 53Gb available and the System takes up 150Gb.

The statements about System size are based on the About This Mac/Storage report

and Disk Utility

The problem is not just the size that System is taking up, but that any check of the specific System or Library folders does not add up to anywhere close to the size that is being reported. I also cannot, other than the two reports above, confirm the space available numbers that are being shown. The file sizes are fluctuating significantly, but I ran du -shc | sort -n several times to try and show the actual sizes of the individual folders and I am getting results that do not match the above.

du: private/var/db/ConfigurationProfiles/Store: Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/zx/q8r82tq12qz0815ybm06bb0h0000gq/0/SafariFamily: Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/zx/q8r82tq12qz0815ybm06bb0h0000gq/0/com.apple.LaunchService s.dv: Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/zx/q8r82tq12qz0815ybm06bb0h0000gq/0/com.apple.nsurlsessiond : Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/zx/q8r82tq12qz0815ybm06bb0h0000gq/0/com.apple.routined: Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000y800007k/0/com.apple.nsurlsessiond : Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/bg/5mbvpkz53gv6g4hjkd3w2zp00000gp/0/SafariFamily: Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/bg/5mbvpkz53gv6g4hjkd3w2zp00000gp/0/com.apple.LaunchService s.dv: Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/bg/5mbvpkz53gv6g4hjkd3w2zp00000gp/0/com.apple.nsurlsessiond : Operation not permitted

du: private/var/folders/bg/5mbvpkz53gv6g4hjkd3w2zp00000gp/0/com.apple.routined: Operation not permitted

0B Groups

0B Network

0B User Information

0B Volumes

0B cores

0B etc

0B tmp

0B var

1.0K home

1.0K net

1.1M sbin

2.6M bin

4.0K installer.failurerequests

4.5K dev

5.7G System

7.7G Library

8.0K Incompatible Software

8.0K Shared Items

11G private

20G Applications

43G Users

88G total

685M usr

The total space from the du report is only 88Gb and the individual folders, Users, Apps, etc. match the size results you would get if you did a Get Info on those folders. Is it possible that any of the /private/var files is accounting for the remainder of the size? Is About This Mac and Disk Utility just incorrectly reading the file sizes?

Any ideas would help. So far at the recommendation of AppleCare I have reset SMC, performed Disk Utility Repair and reinstalled High Sierra. No change in results with any of the above.

Thanks

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13), Standard build 2.7Ghz, 256 Gig HD

Posted on Sep 30, 2017 4:21 PM

Best reply

Sean Calvert Author

Level 2

371 points

Posted on Oct 17, 2017 1:53 PM

Socam

I should have posted a follow up to my question as I finally was able to resolve it after about a 4 hour call and a couple bumps up the line with AppleCare. In my instance, and it may well be yours given the size of your system file, the issue was invisible temporary time machine snapshots that were stored locally and not deleted as they are supposed to be.

The time machine snapshots are invisible to any regular check of your system, but are aggregated in with the system for size. We had to download DaisyDisk, available as a free trial at www.daisydiskapp.com. If you use DaisyDisk to scan your hard drive you should get a gui of the total system size, including a size for hidden files.

Note the size compared to my earlier post. If you click on the purple hidden space link it will let you rescan as an administrator after you enter your administrator password or run it from an admin user account. The administrator rescan confirmed that it was local time machine snapshots.

The standard way to resolve that was apparently to turn off TimeMachine and restart and it should clear the cached files. That did not work. We wound up having to go in to Terminal and doing a sudo tmutil disable. Once Time Machine was disabled we had to go in with Terminal and manually remove the local time machine directories using sudo rmdir. Because that involves deleting hidden directories at the root level you have to be very careful of what you are deleting. In my case the file that was taking up all of the size was /.MobileBackups.

Note that if this is your problem as well it creates an issue with TimeMachine if you are backup up to an external server. Since the local snapshot is never deleted it winds up being backed up as a new file each time TimeMachine does an incremental backup. I completely filled a 6Tb drive with backups of 1.2Tb of files in a month.

View in context

19 replies

aubeone

Level 1

4 points

Jan 10, 2018 4:48 PM in response to dnapolitano4

Thanks for this, it was the solution to my problem.

2017 MBP High Sierra.

Jan 26, 2018 3:40 AM in response to dnapolitano4

That was really helpful a lot it always happens to me..

Ldan6

Level 1

4 points

Mar 2, 2018 9:02 AM in response to dnapolitano4

Thank you so much for providing the command. it worked like a charm. Instantly free over 200GB

chewok

Level 1

8 points

Mar 14, 2018 2:42 PM in response to shagelman

Same for me - 122GB in Adobe Media Cache Files in User/Library/App Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files. Thanks to Sean for leading me to Daisy Disk App - without it, the problem was hidden.

High Sierra disk space over 120Gb