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iMac 512gb SSD space - where has it all gone?

B

bulldoze

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 15, 2011
229
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I fitted a 512gb SSD to our late 2009 iMac a couple of years ago.

It hasn't had much use but I am now using it as a home office pc. 512gb SSD and only 15GB of space left and there is nothing much on the thing.

Upgraded to high sierra and I now have 20GB. I can't think of anything else to take off it. it has MS Office a few IDEs and stuff but not much at all. Cleared all caches, installed Dr cleaner to look for big files but nope, nothing.

What is taking up the room? About reports that 476GB is taken up by system files - but what?
 
My suggestions:
- TURN OFF Time Machine.
- REMOVE any TM local backups (they EAT UP drive space)
- TURN OFF the option to let iCloud "manage" your files.

Also, download "DiskWave" (free, small utility) from here:
https://diskwave.barthe.ph

Then, open it.
Go to preferences and choose to make normally-invisible files VISIBLE.
You'll see what to do next.
 
Tried all these suggestions to no avail.

No idea what is taking up the space. disk wave does not reveal sizes of all directories so I can't see how that can help.
 
If you have daisy disk (paid) it will give you a nice graphical representation of whats taking up storage on your drive. One day I noticed Nvidia Geforce now was taking up lots of space for some reason then reinstalled then all fixed.
 
Well that appears to be 10 pounds down the drain.

Daisy disk reports that 358GB is 'Still hidden' and says to access this I need to sign up for a more powerful version.

Sounds like I would be signing up for some malware. Only dodgy apps do this sort of stuff don't they?
 
bulldoze said:
Well that appears to be 10 pounds down the drain.

Daisy disk reports that 358GB is 'Still hidden' and says to access this I need to sign up for a more powerful version.

Sounds like I would be signing up for some malware. Only dodgy apps do this sort of stuff don't they?
Click to expand...
Try the following command in terminal:
Code: 
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /
You can then drill down by extending the path from /, such as /Users

Display the utilization of your currently mounted disk drives:
Code: 
df -h

DS
 
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OP:
I suggest you read my post 3 above one more time.

I just tried DiskWave on my own drive.
I can see ALL the folders and files, even the hidden ones.

Try DiskWave and MAKE SURE that you have gone to preferences and chosen the option to make normally invisible files VISIBLE.
 
But do you see the sizes of all directories? I made everything visible but without going into every file of every folder I will not be able to see what takes up the space.
 
"I made everything visible but without going into every file of every folder I will not be able to see what takes up the space."

Um... that's the whole point.

DiskWave gives you a way to quickly see where "disk usage is concentrated" -- and then you "work your way down through" the hierarchy of folders to find what is consuming the space.

Just look at the folders "at the top level" that are using the most space, and start exploring inside.

You're probably not going to find the culprits any other way...
 
bulldoze said:
I fitted a 512gb SSD to our late 2009 iMac a couple of years ago.

It hasn't had much use but I am now using it as a home office pc. 512gb SSD and only 15GB of space left and there is nothing much on the thing.

Upgraded to high sierra and I now have 20GB. I can't think of anything else to take off it. it has MS Office a few IDEs and stuff but not much at all. Cleared all caches, installed Dr cleaner to look for big files but nope, nothing.

What is taking up the room? About reports that 476GB is taken up by system files - but what?
Click to expand...


Are you using APFS ? If not you can stop reading here.

APFS snapshots are being created without Time Machine being turned on (although TM is involved in restoring a snapshot and they are reported as TM snapshots). More here and here.

What does tmutil listlocalsnapshots / report in Terminal on your Mac?

The above shows that I have 26 snapshots currently on my internal 256GB iMac flash drive.

Space used by Snapshots is supposed to be made available if free space is running low, but not sure this always works. Your situation sounds odd with only 20Gb free. If you have deleted some very large files they may still be taking space in snapshots.

I have tried many disk space tools and settled on the paid version DaisyDisk as the best (although I hate the useless diagram it shows). It is blazingly fast compared to everything else and in admin mode reports the "hidden space" used by snapshots which DiskDrive does not.

Here is what DaisyDisk shows for my internal 256GB drive:

Screen Shot 2018-04-26 at 06.50.37.png

and here is what DiskDrive shows:

Screen Shot 2018-04-26 at 06.49.22.png

Deleting APFS snapshots can be done as in this article. But the latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner has the facility to create, delete and manage APFS snapshots much more easily.

Screen Shot 2018-04-26 at 07.08.09.png
 
Last edited:
Mike Boreham said:
Deleting APFS snapshots can be done as in this article. But the latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner has the facility to see manage and delete APFS snapshots very easily.
Click to expand...

The option to delete APFS snapshots that CCC offers is for those snapshots created by CCC not Time Machine. Time Machine snapshots can be deleted using a terminal command. The CCC snapshots can be deleted from within CCC. The latest version of CCC (5.1) now offers management of the snapshots it creates.
 
chscag said:
The option to delete APFS snapshots that CCC offers is for those snapshots created by CCC not Time Machine. Time Machine snapshots can be deleted using a terminal command. The CCC snapshots can be deleted from within CCC. The latest version of CCC (5.1) now offers management of the snapshots it creates.
Click to expand...

No. CCC can delete (or restore) TM snapshots as well. There is no essential difference between TM snapshots and CCC snapshots:

https://bombich.com/blog/2018/03/30...ups-carbon-copy-cloner?utm_source=xlr8yourmac

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/leveraging-snapshots-on-apfs-volumes

It will also delete several in one go, which is not so easy in Terminal.

If you have CCC, try it.
 
Last edited:
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Thanks for the update on that Mike. I had not read thru the CCC KB after I updated to 5.1. Good to know that I can now use CCC to remove all snapshots. I had been running the beta of CCC 5.1 for awhile and thought it only was able to manage its own snapshots. I use CCC every day to supplement my backups. Once again, thanks for the info. :)
 
Just installed the 5.1 update - working my way through the snapshot functionality now, only one thing better than a backup technology/disk...is 2 or even 3! I'll add CCC snapshots to my current CCC image and TM backup regime :)
 
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