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Mac OS High Sierra - System Storage Issue
- Thread starter cadugauch
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Maybe. If you have Time Machine enabled but have not backed up recently, that might take up a lot of space. Just plug your backup drive in and allow it to complete a backup and that might clear up some space.
My System disk use is around 90GB on a machine I have been using for years (including migration from an older one). But, when I opened About This Mac > Storage > Manage, it fine tuned the report and then reported System as only 62GB. So, it seems initially it reports stuff in the System category until it digs deeper to analyze the disk use.
My System disk use is around 90GB on a machine I have been using for years (including migration from an older one). But, when I opened About This Mac > Storage > Manage, it fine tuned the report and then reported System as only 62GB. So, it seems initially it reports stuff in the System category until it digs deeper to analyze the disk use.
Since your machine has been updated from prior macOS version(s) it’s impossible to determine what would be “normal”.
Post an Etrecheck report (or at least run one and look at it yourself) for further analysis.
Post an Etrecheck report (or at least run one and look at it yourself) for further analysis.
There are many discussions over on the Apple forums about size of system storage. There is no one answer as to what is being stored. https://discussions.apple.com/message/32740453#message32740453
A LOT of stuff gets included in "System." Notes, reminders, map caches, browser caches and history, SMS, MMS and iMessages, fonts and more all get included in "System."
The storage graphic is often wrong. It uses the Spotlight index and when that index gets corrupted the readings are all wrong.
Use Disk Utility to find free space or do a Get Info on your Macintosh HD to find available space.
A LOT of stuff gets included in "System." Notes, reminders, map caches, browser caches and history, SMS, MMS and iMessages, fonts and more all get included in "System."
The storage graphic is often wrong. It uses the Spotlight index and when that index gets corrupted the readings are all wrong.
Use Disk Utility to find free space or do a Get Info on your Macintosh HD to find available space.
As mentioned above, this is a common question. I would say don't drive yourself crazy over it and just forget it. Its clearly just an effect of Apple changing the algorithm that "defines whats what." My reasoning for coming to this determination is this. I recently performed a full erase and clean install of 10.13.4. I don't use time machine, and instead drag desktop, documents, downloads, and music onto my external Samsung T3. My photos are in iCloud photo library, and I like to cleanly reinstall all of my apps instead of migrate from a TM backup. After an erase and install, I drag back over the folders mentioned above, install cleanly all of my apps, and let photos resync from the cloud. After this process finished and I give my machine ample time to index, MacOS reports 399GB is used by system, and 186GB by downloads. Note that together this is 585GB. Now when I do get info on my desktop and downloads folders, it totals up to 594GB. Looking further into what is on my desktop, there is an almost 10GB folder of old photos in jpg format not imported into the photos app. Most of the files are mkv videos that takes up all of this space. The only thing I can deduce here is that MacOS doesn't like mkv as it is not a native container that Apple likes.
tl;dr: The system section of storage in about this mac is now useless.
tl;dr: The system section of storage in about this mac is now useless.