Mysteriously Filled Drive Space

[kazzmcsass]

For nearly a month now I have been receiving the error "Your start-up disk is full" and "Your start-up disk is almost full" and it's seriously hindering my ability to use my Mac. You see, this ins't my personal computer. This Macbook was given to me by my school so I can do work in class but because of this error my computer doesn't always work. Often Google Chrome pages wont load or I sometimes can't save files onto my computer.

I cleared my trash, downloads, documents, and other places I thought files would be but can't find where all this space is being mysteriously taken up. I need help because my schools tech support didn't do anything to help me. This is what my storage looks like:

 

[Goatllama]

Good place to start: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/something-is-eating-up-hard-drive.1951571

 

[AZhappyjack]

Try an app like OmniDiskSweeper to find the large files or folders containing large files/large numbers of files...

 

[DeltaMac]

Looks like the warnings are correct, and you certainly are running out of space!
First step (for me!) would be to go into your user folder/Library, and trash the Caches folder.
If you are not sure how to get into that normally-hidden folder, go the finder, then click on the Go menu.
While that menu is open, press and hold your Option key. You will see your Library folder appear in that menu, so you can open it. Find the Caches folder, and drag it to the trash.
Next step is to restart your Mac. You have to restart, so you can then empty the trash completely. And, your system will create a new, minimal Caches folder.
Typically that will have at least 1 GB of files, and removing it should cause you no problems, and would give you some very quick space - and at least get you out of a warning zone of less than 250MB of space left. And, will then let you use some of the other tips that folks may have to get more space.

Which model MacBook do you have?
You can see that from the same About this Mac window in the screen shot that you posted, by clicking on the Overview button.

IMHO, a 60GB boot drive is less than useful. I expect that your school's unhelpful tech support likely "helped" you by providing a work laptop that is hardly usable with only 60GB of total storage.

 

[JohnDS]

A 64 Gig flash drive in a Mac simply doesn't make sense.

I suspect your Mac actually had actually had a fusion drive which would be a 64 Gig flash drive combined with a large hard drive. The two drives are combined in software to look like one. I suspect that somehow the fusion drive has been split, or the hard drive part has died. You need to take the computer back to your school's IT department to get this fixed.

 

[DeltaMac]

I think it is highly unlikely that a "loaner" MacBook (might be a MacBookAir) would have a fusion drive.
Waiting for the OP to return with a couple of details (like the model of Mac they have)
OP also does not sound very confident about that schools's IT folks.

 

[JohnDS]

It would certainly be nice to know what model Mac the OP has. You might be right. I didn't think a recent Mac has shipped with only 64 Gigs of RAM, but it appears the 2012 MacBook Air did. I agree that that is not enough disk space to be very useful.

 

[kazzmcsass]

Looks like the warnings are correct, and you certainly are running out of space!
First step (for me!) would be to go into your user folder/Library, and trash the Caches folder.
If you are not sure how to get into that normally-hidden folder, go the finder, then click on the Go menu.
While that menu is open, press and hold your Option key. You will see your Library folder appear in that menu, so you can open it. Find the Caches folder, and drag it to the trash.
Next step is to restart your Mac. You have to restart, so you can then empty the trash completely. And, your system will create a new, minimal Caches folder.
Typically that will have at least 1 GB of files, and removing it should cause you no problems, and would give you some very quick space - and at least get you out of a warning zone of less than 250MB of space left. And, will then let you use some of the other tips that folks may have to get more space.

Which model MacBook do you have?
You can see that from the same About this Mac window in the screen shot that you posted, by clicking on the Overview button.

IMHO, a 60GB boot drive is less than useful. I expect that your school's unhelpful tech support likely "helped" you by providing a quickwork laptop that is hardly usable with only 60GB of total storage.

Man, in the time I haven't responded my computers space got completely filled but clearing the Caches as you suggest freed some space. The type is MacBook Air 11-inch Mid 2011 if I am correct. This computer is at least 3 years old and, in all honestly, hasn't been handled with super extremely good care.
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Try an app like OmniDiskSweeper to find the large files or folders containing large files/large numbers of files...

I'm generally very wary of what I put on my laptop, plus I probably no longer have space for this program.

 

[LiveM]

I had the same problem and tried deleting everything I could think of and reinstalling OSX. Nothing worked.

In the end I installed Dr Cleaner which has been fantastic and deletes junk files every time I close an app.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I had a variation of this problem where my free space suddenly went from 700 GB to 400 GB. The cause was a runaway log file. Deleting it (and the program that was creating the log) sorted things. The trick, of course, is finding the offending log, but you can make this FAR easier with Console.app in your Utilities folder.

 

[kazzmcsass]

I had the same problem and tried deleting everything I could think of and reinstalling OSX. Nothing worked.

In the end I installed Dr Cleaner which has been fantastic and deletes junk files every time I close an app.

I checked out this app, and it seemed really reliable, but apparently my mac is too old to download this app.