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System Storage in Mojave

bigdog5142

bigdog5142

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
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I have a 2016 15" Macbook Pro with 512GB SSD. I was just told this morning that 345GB of SYSTEM STORAGE is normal by Apple engineers (via customer support). Their solution was to do a Time Machine backup, do a clean install of the OS and then use Migration Assistant to migrate all my files. I also attached a DaisyDisk screenshot of my drive. It indicates that 223GB is "hidden space." WOW!

Has anyone else had this issue? 345GB seems ENORMOUS for system storage. I'm sure there are things that have "gummed" it up over the years...but SHEESH! I only use about 100GB of storage on the computer, the rest is on a 4TB external. TIA.

Daisy
 

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bigdog5142 said:
I have a 2016 15" Macbook Pro with 512GB SSD. I was just told this morning that 345GB of SYSTEM STORAGE is normal by Apple engineers (via customer support). Their solution was to do a Time Machine backup, do a clean install of the OS and then use Migration Assistant to migrate all my files. I also attached a DaisyDisk screenshot of my drive. It indicates that 223GB is "hidden space." WOW!

Has anyone else had this issue? 345GB seems ENORMOUS for system storage. I'm sure there are things that have "gunned" it up over the years...but SHEESH! I only use about 100GB of storage on the computer, the rest is on a 4TB external. TIA.
Click to expand...
I had something similar, but it was only 43 GB of hidden space. I use Time machine and Carbon Copy Cloner and they like to save snapshots. The snapshots can get larger when doing TM backups after macOS upgrades.

In Daisy Disk you can click on the "hidden space>purgeable space" it will display that it is Time Machine temporary files and you can remove them by dragging then to the Daisy Disk Collector & delete in the lower left hand corner of the window. I would strongly recommend having a fresh backup BEFORE performing something like this, just in case.

Screen Shot 2019-05-25 at 09.27.25.jpg
 
Thanks for the advice. Did that before I contacted Apple...unfortunately DaisyDisc says that there is 223GB of hidden space that it can’t see.
 
I've seen similar in Windows and Mac OS. I'll just start at the root directory of the system volume. Then Get Info or Properties of the folders. Looking for the big one. Open it and work through the folders and levels until I zero in on the database to purge.

Now I don't check every folder one at a time. I work through it as efficiently as possible by selecting half the folders and Get Info. If it is there. Then select half of those. Cutting it down by half each time until I find the culprit.

Mac OS also has an option to show folder sizes in details view. Which makes it quicker. Usually it's something like an out of control mail database or iCloud photos cache (if you aren't downloading full size photos).

To Get Info on a group of items. I believe you hold down the option key. Otherwise you'll get a ton of Get Info windows.
 
bigdog5142 said:
I have a 2016 15" Macbook Pro with 512GB SSD. I was just told this morning that 345GB of SYSTEM STORAGE is normal by Apple engineers (via customer support). Their solution was to do a Time Machine backup, do a clean install of the OS and then use Migration Assistant to migrate all my files. I also attached a DaisyDisk screenshot of my drive. It indicates that 223GB is "hidden space." WOW!

Has anyone else had this issue? 345GB seems ENORMOUS for system storage. I'm sure there are things that have "gummed" it up over the years...but SHEESH! I only use about 100GB of storage on the computer, the rest is on a 4TB external. TIA.

Daisy
Click to expand...

Take a look at this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/solution-reclaim-storage-back-from-system.2073174/ The space may be used by snapshots. If so it can be easily recovered.

FYI, you can also download a version of Daisy Disk from the developers website that will look at the system area in detail. It is outlined here: https://daisydiskapp.com/support.html
 
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Thanks for the continued ideas/help. I ran into that same issue with DaisyDisk...and downloaded the version that is through their website, not the one through the App Store. So...I’ll look at that thread and check snapshots. I’d LOVE to do anything but nuke my SSD and restore...but I have time this weekend so I may have to resort to that.
 
Well...I nuked it...and it’s like having a new computer. It’s gonna take a bit to get everything back into place...but TONS of space now. Thanks for all the help!
 
Summarizing the thread linked by nouveau_redneck...

For those who would prefer not to nuke their mac in order to remove any Time Machine Local Snapshots. You can use the TimeMachineUtility (tmutil) in the terminal to …

List the existing Time Machine local snapshots — tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

And you can pretty quickly “thin” them — tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 9999999999 1

Or if you prefer to avoid the terminal, you can follow Apple’s advise and temporarily turn off Time Machine —https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015 — BUT… beware that after turning off Time Machine you may have to wait much longer than Apple's suggested “few minutes to allow the local snapshots to be deleted.” — more like several hours.

After several hours of monitoring TM's progress of very slowly deleting less than half of the local snapshots I thinned the others down ot a single snapshot in roughly a minute, using the terminal which let me see a list of the remaining local snapshots and exactly which ones were removed during the "thinning".

GetRealBro
 
getrealbro said:
Summarizing the thread linked by nouveau_redneck...

For those who would prefer not to nuke their mac in order to remove any Time Machine Local Snapshots. You can use the TimeMachineUtility (tmutil) in the terminal to …

List the existing Time Machine local snapshots — tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

And you can pretty quickly “thin” them — tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 9999999999 1

Or if you prefer to avoid the terminal, you can follow Apple’s advise and temporarily turn off Time Machine —https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015 — BUT… beware that after turning off Time Machine you may have to wait much longer than Apple's suggested “few minutes to allow the local snapshots to be deleted.” — more like several hours.

After several hours of monitoring TM's progress of very slowly deleting less than half of the local snapshots I thinned the others down ot a single snapshot in roughly a minute, using the terminal which let me see a list of the remaining local snapshots and exactly which ones were removed during the "thinning".

GetRealBro
Click to expand...

I've read that works for many people in many different situations. However, I tried that multiple times and only gained about 20GB of space. After "nuking" my system and starting from scratch, I now have just under 400GB of free space on my machine.

Now...this has caused me to evaluate what apps I truly used and my system had been updated since Lion on the top of other OS systems...so I'm sure it was "gunked" up pretty good. Running like a champ now.

At the same point...it's taken about a day's worth of work to get everything back to where it should be, and I'm sure I'm going to come across some file somewhere that I missed. I am going to save ONE Time Machine back up to my archive external just in case...the Time Machine drive will be re-associated with this "new" machine. I even had to nuke my Backblaze to backup this current machine. I anticipate that my Time Machine backup will suffice. However, very nerve-wracking. So...go at your own risk.
 
I also have the problem that trashing large files doesn't free up extra space. I had 88 GB free and trashed more than 70 GB of unnecessary files. I emptied the trash, but the space available was now only 80 GB! I ran daisy disk and deleted the 142 GB of purgeable space but only 5 GB was recovered. I cloned the Macintosh SSD APFS to a hard drive APFS.
Get info gives me:
SSD: Capacity 500 GB Available 85 GB Used 414 GB (purgeable not mentioned!!!!)
HD: Capacity 502 GB Available 224 GB Used 468 GB (190 GB purgeable)
Daisy disk gives me now:
hidden space 296 GB
purgeable space 137 GB
still hidden 159 GB
I am running Mojave 10.14.5 on a Mac Pro with Accelsior S and a Samsung EVO 850 mounted on this pci-e card.
In terminal: tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.bombich.ccc.69E7809D-C206-4AE7-9639-C5D7BD002542.2019-05-30-205103
com.bombich.ccc.1563A712-C094-4FCD-9155-82F8BEF440B0.2019-06-24-175603
com.bombich.ccc.41BFC9B1-36D7-45C6-BAE7-0B4C5A8F04AB.2019-07-05-095015
com.bombich.ccc.B13EE9D1-381D-4ADA-B988-73B7B2B193D4.2019-07-16-221928
And although HD info gives 224 GB available, when I boot from this HD, only 33 GB is free.
What can I do? Please help. TIA
 
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The kind people from Daisy Disk Support solved my problem. I can't thank them enough.
Carbon Copy Cloner app can create local snapshots contributing to Still Hidden space. Apps on macOS can't remove the data nor snapshots created by other applications, so Daisy Disk can't "purge" those snapshots.
Here are the instructions on how to get rid of them.

f1o5iw5.png

I deleted nearly 50 GB of CCC snapshots and to my surprise 222 GB free space became available.
 
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