Internal SSD filling up

[Speed38]

I am trying to help a senior with a situation: she has a MB Air with the smallest SSD available: 121 GB.

Her storage indicates 10.28 GB available of 121.12 GB and she cannot d/l and install a macOS update because there is insufficient room and, of course, her SSD is dangerously full.

I looked up her model and the SSD is soldered to the mother board and can’t be replaced.

Let’s face it; even if she dumps some stuff onto an external SSD, that's probably going to be a temporary solution.

So it would appear to me the better alternative is for her to get a good quality 500 GB or 1 TB external SSD and for me to set her up to boot from that external SSD.

But...I am uncertain as to the steps to take to do so.

I think the first step would be to attach the external SSD, download an installer for Ventura which she is now running, install Ventura on the external SSD, boot from that SSD and then run migration assistant to move all the data from her internal SSD to the new external SSD.

Lastly, I am not going to let her cheap out on that SSD, and so would welcome suggestions as to the best choice for such a drive.

 

[Knightartorias8]

Your process sounds solid in theory, I have bootable drives dating back to OS X, so this can totally work. My only concern is the booting priority post repair.

If I can recall correctly (from my repairs and migrations at my store), even with bootable OS's on an external drive and the customer drive completely wiped, the computer will by default, attempt to boot to the internal drive with no OS (with the ? Folder Icon). This means she/you will have to option boot every time the device turns on.

Sorry I don't have suggestions for SSD's, the only reliable brand I use as a technician is LaCie. They are fast and hearty, but their high price point can reliably be expected.

 

[HDFan]

What year is the MacBook Air?

 

[Shirasaki]

If that MacBook Air is equipped with Apple silicon, and internal drive dies, you cannot boot any version of macOS from external drive to continue to use it. Either the ssd and associated chips would need to be replaced, or the computer would only be suitable for recycle/landfill.

Her best course of action at this point is to sell this MacBook Air and use the money to upgrade to a newer version of 256GB or more internal storage model to make her life a lot easier. Attaching external ssd to boot macOS comes with serious stability issues, namely touching the cable and/or port has a very high chance to lockup your external macOS system with no way to recover except forced reboot (don’t ask me how I know this).

Obviously, next time when buying MacBook, stay way from base level storage config like plague unless you are absolutely certain your use case is so light that filling up internal drive is near impossible in the years you plan to use the MacBook on. It just makes no sense to cheap out on storage and run the risk of having to spend lots of time clearing up storage later on.

 

[Speed38]

If that MacBook Air is equipped with Apple silicon, and internal drive dies, you cannot boot any version of macOS from external drive to continue to use it. Either the ssd and associated chips would need to be replaced, or the computer would only be suitable for recycle/landfill.

Her best course of action at this point is to sell this MacBook Air and use the money to upgrade to a newer version of 256GB or more internal storage model to make her life a lot easier. Attaching external ssd to boot macOS comes with serious stability issues, namely touching the cable and/or port has a very high chance to lockup your external macOS system with no way to recover except forced reboot (don’t ask me how I know this).

Obviously, next time when buying MacBook, stay way from base level storage config like plague unless you are absolutely certain your use case is so light that filling up internal drive is near impossible in the years you plan to use the MacBook on. It just makes no sense to cheap out on storage and run the risk of having to spend lots of time clearing up storage later on.

She really is not in a position where she can afford a new or refurbished Mac. I have attached a link to a screenshot of her Macintosh HD storage:

https://imgur.com/Q8QBGxv

I suspect that many of those iOS files can be dumped as can at least some of her Apps. and that would
probably let her recover 15 or 20 GB, enough to give her some breathing room on that HD.

And could we not, in Storage, store more items in the iCloud and Optimize Storage?

 

[Chuckeee]

You could add an external drive. Move all the documents, photos, video and email to the external. And then set the external as the default for all future documents, photos, video and email. They would then need to keep the external always hooked up.

You can also see if there are any other really large files. You can move those over also and replace them with aliases on the internal drive.

 

[Shirasaki]

She really is not in a position where she can afford a new or refurbished Mac. I have attached a link to a screenshot of her Macintosh HD storage:

https://imgur.com/Q8QBGxv

I suspect that many of those iOS files can be dumped as can at least some of her Apps. and that would
probably let her recover 15 or 20 GB, enough to give her some breathing room on that HD.

And could we not, in Storage, store more items in the iCloud and Optimize Storage?

Google search online to find Out how to locate the ios backup on that MacBook. Follow the guide to create symbolic link in macOS (terminal use required), and use external drive to backup her iOS devices.

That will probably free up more than 50GB of free space for her internal drive, and doesnt Need to remove any applications and other data.

I still highly recommend her to upgrade to a MacBook with more internal storage. Remember, when ssd is filled, ssd will die very quickly, and when it dies, MacBook is completely useless without very expensive third party repairs (Apple will NOT do that kind of repair for you I can guarantee).

 

[HDFan]

Disk is way too full. She needs to keep 20-30% of a disk free.

Making a much larger external SSD her boot disk woud be the simplest solution.

 

[Speed38]

Thanks so very much for all the helpful replies to this post.

I sent her the links to several videos on how to carefully remove things that you don't really need from your computer.

When she first emailed me she had 10.82 GB free out of 121.12.

I emailed her links to one or two videos, demonstrating how to carefully remove items you don't really need from one's Mac.

She emailed me this back this morning: "The update I want to download requires 17.77 GB. I now have over 25."

So, she is doing quite well on her own but I will visit and see what she has done next week and report back here, just to close the loop.

Also, I was mistaken, about which model of the MacBook Air she has. Turns out she has this one: MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) - refurbished/purchase july 2017.

I looked up online and it does, indeed have a replaceable SSD, it is not soldered in, as it is on some of the more recent MacBook airs and so this is a possibility as I have done this before, on friends' Macs, and it's not as hard as it looks.

By the way, I have been playing around with Dictation on my iMac, and when I earlier spoke the word "computer," here's what resulted: "cum pewter"!! NSFW?

 

[Scoot65]

Good news regarding regarding the SSD is replaceable.
I've had a quick look at iFixit's guide and it seems pretty straight forward. So much so that I think I could do it myself (and that's saying something!!).

May be a good idea to look into buying a larger capacity SSD which seem to be not badly priced.

MacBook Air 13" Early 2015 SSD Replacement

Use this guide to upgrade or replace the solid-state drive in a MacBook Air 13” Early 2015. This MacBook Air uses a proprietary storage drive...

www.ifixit.com

 

[arcite]

Get rid of those iOS backups; tell her to subscribe to iCloud for a few $ a month; then back up everything automatically to the cloud. Voila; free hard drive space.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

iOS files are definitely not needed, that is gobbling up her storage really badly. She should get the 50GB iCloud storage option and store all of her iPhone files in the cloud. It’s only $0.99 per month, if she can’t afford $12 a year she might have bigger problems, no offense!

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

I am trying to help a senior with a situation: she has a MB Air with the smallest SSD available: 121 GB.

Her storage indicates 10.28 GB available of 121.12 GB and she cannot d/l and install a macOS update because there is insufficient room and, of course, her SSD is dangerously full.

I looked up her model and the SSD is soldered to the mother board and can’t be replaced.

Let’s face it; even if she dumps some stuff onto an external SSD, that's probably going to be a temporary solution.

So it would appear to me the better alternative is for her to get a good quality 500 GB or 1 TB external SSD and for me to set her up to boot from that external SSD.

But...I am uncertain as to the steps to take to do so.

I think the first step would be to attach the external SSD, download an installer for Ventura which she is now running, install Ventura on the external SSD, boot from that SSD and then run migration assistant to move all the data from her internal SSD to the new external SSD.

Lastly, I am not going to let her cheap out on that SSD, and so would welcome suggestions as to the best choice for such a drive.

Just FYI if you were to go the external route—which is probably a lot easier than replacing the internal drive itself— I think it’s entirely possible to boot from the internal drive but just put things like the user folder on an external SSD. It isn’t ideal if the laptop will be moved often but it would free up all the space being taken up by her files.

 

[Foobus]

Also, I was mistaken, about which model of the MacBook Air she has. Turns out she has this one: MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) - refurbished/purchase july 2017.

I looked up online and it does, indeed have a replaceable SSD, it is not soldered in, as it is on some of the more recent MacBook airs and so this is a possibility as I have done this before, on friends' Macs, and it's not as hard as it looks.

Replacing a drive on one of those is actually rather easy. And you can get non Apple drives with 2-3x the speed of the original - more space and more speed!

 

[Speed38]

Here's the situation. Following a MacMost video and using the freeware GrandPerspective.app to find the biggest files on her computer, we improved her situation from 10 GB available to almost 30 GB available by tossing her iOS files, GarageBand.app, several items in ~/Libary associated with GarageBand, plus a ton of music her son put on it years age and she was not even aware was there. She installed the update and all is fine. She realizes that it's getting close to the time that she ought to replace that 2015 MB Air and I will steer her towards one with at least a 500 GB, if not a 1 TB, SSD.

If I may ask another question on this same subject: without changing the Optimize Mac Storage settings, if in the Finder she drags folders from her Home folder to the iCloud Drive folder, these will no longer take up room on her internal MacintoshHD, right?

And now the one I am not sure of: when she runs TimeMachine backups, will everything in her iCloud Drive folder be backed up to her TM backup?

Many thanks.

 

[xboxbml]

Thanks so very much for all the helpful replies to this post.

I sent her the links to several videos on how to carefully remove things that you don't really need from your computer.

When she first emailed me she had 10.82 GB free out of 121.12.

I emailed her links to one or two videos, demonstrating how to carefully remove items you don't really need from one's Mac.

She emailed me this back this morning: "The update I want to download requires 17.77 GB. I now have over 25."

So, she is doing quite well on her own but I will visit and see what she has done next week and report back here, just to close the loop.

Also, I was mistaken, about which model of the MacBook Air she has. Turns out she has this one: MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) - refurbished/purchase july 2017.

I looked up online and it does, indeed have a replaceable SSD, it is not soldered in, as it is on some of the more recent MacBook airs and so this is a possibility as I have done this before, on friends' Macs, and it's not as hard as it looks.

By the way, I have been playing around with Dictation on my iMac, and when I earlier spoke the word "computer," here's what resulted: "cum pewter"!! NSFW?

She has same model I have. I would just get a bigger SSD and adapter. I've got 2TB with small Syntech adapter. Other main thread here loaded with info..

Upgrading 2013/2014 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

This thread is about upgrading MacBook Airs & Macbook Pros (2013-2015) with new high speed and/or high capacity NVMe SSDs. This thread was one of the first to talk about MacBook Pro NVMe SSD upgrades on Macrumors, and was started by user "maxthackray", which we can thank and give tribute for...

forums.macrumors.com

I saw there was lots of iOS files listed in that bar graph pic. Perhaps those are iDevice backups or OS *.ipsw files. Those would be the operating system install files with the .ipsw file extension. Those can be deleted if they still exist on the machine. I would also see if she has a good TimeMachine backup on an external drive before doing anything..

 

[Speed38]

Thanks so much for that link and yes, she does have a TimeMachine backup. When I offer to help a senior and that help encompasses anything that might go wrong, I tell them I won't touch their computer until we set up TimeMachine.