HDD Keep Filling Up And I'm Not Even Downloading Anything

[zorox]

2018 Mac mini with 250 gig space.

Mac mini crashed a few weeks ago because my HDD was full and I thought I was hacked because I didn't even download anything. I could never find the reason where all my storage was going.

I did a reformat and was left with around 200gig free space. Mac mini was running like a dream again and 2 weeks later I'm back at 50 gig left.

I drives my wild because I can open my disc and was my HDD space diminish in real time like something is downloading in the background.

So my best guess is since I have downloaded nothing and using a 2 TB external SDD for storage I'm thinking it's iCloud syncing and downloading everything to my drive.

How to I turn this OFF???

I already disabled to function optimise Mac storage for iCloud but now I don't know where all this data is stored so I can delete it. Any help?

 

[Mike Boreham]

I already disabled to function optimise Mac storage for iCloud but now I don't know where all this data is stored so I can delete it. Any help?

This exactly the wrong thing to do. Optimise OFF forces macOS to try to download full size copies of everything. Optimise ON gives macOS permission to replace full size files with pointers if space is tight.

Same with Photos if you are using iCloud Photos.

 

[Ruggy]

Very malware like behaviour.
Maybe it's worth downloading Malwarebytes and checking you haven't got something which is parking data on your HD. You may have reformatted but that doesn't mean something hasn't downloaded it again.
Better to check anyway.

 

[zorox]

Very malware like behaviour.
Maybe it's worth downloading Malwarebytes and checking you haven't got something which is parking data on your HD. You may have reformatted but that doesn't mean something hasn't downloaded it again.
Better to check anyway.

already had it installed. Mac was clean. The site that's in my iCloud is the same as the size that's taken on my HDD. so I'm sure it's that. I just don't know where those downloaded files are located

 

[Mike Boreham]

already had it installed. Mac was clean. The site that's in my iCloud is the same as the size that's taken on my HDD. so I'm sure it's that. I just don't know where those downloaded files are located

They will be located on your iCloud Drive…should be an item in the Finder sidebar.

After turning optimise ON you can accelerate the process of freeing space by right clicking on folders and unchecking “Keep downloaded”.