System taking up too much space (and is variable depending on hardware used)
I am using a MacBook Air, running on OS Sierra version 10.12.6 I ran into trouble with disk space, so I moved all photos to an external drive (Porsche, 2 TB), and deleted all photos from my MacBook Air. I continue to have trouble with disk space, and have been scrubbing and removing things as much as possible. I feel like I hardly have ANYTHING on my computer, but I am still getting low disk space notices.
I finally discovered something very strange is happening with the system file and my external drive. Regardless of whether the external hard drive is plugged in or not, the system report suggests that I only have between 8 and 10 GB available out of a total of 120 GB available. But the report of WHERE the storage is used changes dramatically.
| Condition | Size of System Files | Size of Photo Files |
|---|---|---|
| External Drive NOT plugged in | 76 GB | 0 GB |
| External Drive Plugged in | 933.9 MB | 54.64 GB |
Below is the report I get if the external drive is NOT connected - it makes sense to me, because I (am pretty sure that I) deleted all the photos from my MacBook Air. But why is the system file so huge? I have no way to manage how much space the system file is taking up.
Below is the report I get if the external drive IS connected. This is supposed to be a report of just the HD, right? Where did all of these photos come from and how can I delete them? I would be happy to delete them, but I can't find them. If I open iPhotos, it is just opening the library that is on my external drive. If I try to open photos without the external drive there, I get an error message saying it can't find my photos. If I do a search for .jpg files with the external drive not connected, I do find a few, but no way is it even 1 GB worth.
I have been looking at other people who report problems similar to these, so the one thing I will add is that I do use Time Machine, and I use the external drive for the backups. But these changes in how much memory is consumed from one location to another happen in a matter of seconds (e.g. I disconnect the drive and the memory totals switch up right away). It seems very unlikely to be part of some cache from Time Machine Backups.
Help would be most appreciated. Thanks so much,
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8), null
