High Sierra disk space over 120Gb

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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

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Answer 1

Best reply

Sean Calvert Author

Level 2

371 points

Oct 17, 2017 1:53 PM in response to Socam

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.

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Answer 2

Nov 27, 2017 6:52 PM in response to Sean Calvert

Try running this command:

sudo tmutil thinLocalSnapshots / 10000000000 4

The likely reason is a series of local snapshots being created for TimeMachine, which are not properly being cleaned out. You might actually exacerbate the situation by deleting files to make room, because High Sierra basically creates snapshots recording everything that was deleted just in case.

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Answer 3

rakouma

Level 1

18 points

Feb 10, 2018 1:16 PM in response to dnapolitano4

I disable time machine with tmutil disable and then ran thinLocalSnapshots, cut my system usage down by 80%

is there however a way to find those snapshot files listed? I would like to delete them entirely, I don't really use time machine any more or need anything backed up.

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Answer 4

poddan

Level 1

4 points

Nov 19, 2017 4:57 AM in response to Sean Calvert

The thing that helped me was to delete the Apple Server app with AppCleaner. The reason I tried this was that I suspected invisible snapshot files that accumulated on my local disk, I tried to find them but couldn't. I use TM to my AE.

I was down to a few MB and started to be desperate, after emptying the trash with the Server app (15k files) I got back 127GB.. My system disk was almost 90GB, now its 7.4GB.

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Answer 5

Nov 22, 2017 4:30 PM in response to poddan

I just upgraded from a 2007 MacBook Pro to a new iMac with Sierra installed. I used Time Machine to migrate all my User files to the iMac, and manually transferred my applications (leaving behind unused applications that I seldom used).

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I ended up with the 2TB Fusion drive in my iMac practically full. My MacBook Pro drive only had 950GB on it, so I knew there was no way that I should see the Fusion drive 3/4 full.

I tried all the usual recommended methods to fix the problem. I finally saw this recommendation to use the "DaisyDisk" app, which is available from the App Store.

Right away, I found the problem...I had a hidden folder named, "xxx xxx_Home Folder_1" that contained almost 900 GB of data duplicating my actual Home Folder.

If you are uncomfortable with using Terminal, you CAN use DaisyDisk to delete hidden files, if you wish. I suggest you download the paid version from the DaisyDisk website. The App Store version doesn't allow you to delete hidden files.

However, if you do download and pay for it from the App Store, and try to delete hidden files, a window will open advising you how to obtain a registration code from the DaisyDisk website that will allow you to do so. Follow the instructions.

Bottom line, if you don't 'see' a file, or files, that are obviously taking up space, I strongly suggest you try "DaisyDisk" to see if you have some hidden files that are hogging space.

Worked like a charm for me. I'm now a happy camper!

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Answer 6

Dec 18, 2017 7:56 AM in response to poddan

If anyone has this problem that happens to edit video--my solution was to clear out the media cache in Adobe Premiere (which you can do through preferences in Premiere). These are temp files that can build up over time in your system folder--for me that saved 150 gb or so.

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Answer 7

Mar 5, 2018 1:05 AM in response to dnapolitano4

WOW! Thanks for the tip, running this command took my HD from 16gb free to 108gb free.

Thanks so much. Now if I could just figure out why I cannot copy any files larger than 2.3gb from my MacBook to my 4tb HD I would be sorted.

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Answer 8

Mar 6, 2018 1:38 AM in response to bamsp

Hi Bamsp,

I do not use TimeMachine and have been struggling with this issue for quite a while.

It turned out that 60 GB on my computer was taken by Evernote backup (it is a note taking app). Perhaps your case is similar?

I've followed the comments in this section and downloaded DaisyDisk app, which worked wonders. I used the free trail version and then deleted files manually.

Good luck,

marta

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