Clean Install Big Sur using 100GB Data is this normal?

[jkundi]

Hi there folks, I've clean installed Big Sur for the second time today, and noticed under the Macintosh HD - Data under Disk Utility says 100GB used... is this normal? Can anyone confirm this?

 

[dsemf]

Hi there folks, I've clean installed Big Sur for the second time today, and noticed under the Macintosh HD - Data under Disk Utility says 100GB used... is this normal? Can anyone confirm this?

View attachment 1685170

What does Finder show for the size of your user data? Are you using iCloud data such as Photos, Music, Desktop and Documents?

The following terminal command will show you the size. Note: It may take a minute or so depending on the number files.

du -sg ~/

DS

 

[BeatCrazy]

That's not a clean install. A fresh install of Big Sur is that 16.09GB volume. You've got 100GB of other user data that you can delete (maybe?) by deleting the leftover volume.

 

[dsemf]

That's not a clean install. A fresh install of Big Sur is that 16.09GB volume. You've got 100GB of other user data that you can delete (maybe?) by deleting the leftover volume.

The 16GB is the system volume. The other is the data volume. The two make up an APFS volume group. The user data, 3rd party applications, etc. are installed in the data volume.

DS

 

[w0lf]

Clearly OP doesn't know what a clean install means... First you need to erase your drive if you want to have a "clean install".

https://support.apple.com/HT208496

If you don't intend to erase everything on your system then you aren't doing a clean install and are justing re-installing the existing OS.

Installing macOS does not erase existing user data. So likely you have about 80GB of user data.

 

[BeatCrazy]

The 16GB is the system volume. The other is the data volume. The two make up an APFS volume group. The user data, 3rd party applications, etc. are installed in the data volume.

DS

Agreed! And you explained it much better than I did

Clearly OP doesn't know what a clean install means... First you need to erase your drive if you want to have a "clean install".

https://support.apple.com/HT208496

If you don't intend to erase everything on your system then you aren't doing a clean install and are justing re-installing the existing OS.

Installing macOS does not erase existing user data. So likely you have about 80GB of user data.

^^ This right here.

 

[drmeatball]

No no no, seems like you guys haven't done a clean install in a while. OP, assuming you nuked the whole drive, check your iCloud photos. Doing a fresh install and subsequent log in to iCloud automatically syncs your photo library if your settings were previously to keep all devices in sync. Can potentially be time consuming and storage intensive.

 

[jkundi]

Ok wait wait, I have installed the apps back (Adobe CC) and iCloud Photos, desktop, documents etc before taking that screenshot. I'm guessing this is contributing to the 100GB. I did erase everything using disk utility on boot up recovery mode and installing BigSur from a bootable USB drive.