High Sierra System Storage taking 80 Gigabytes of space

[falcon2908]

Hey,
I'm new here.
My system storage is taking up 80 Gigs of space for some reason. I don't think it's normal for it to take so much space. My applications and Documents are 12 Gigs and 10 Gigs.

I have heard time machine creates stamps which takes up space.
So I tried inputting
sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
into the terminal but it did not show anything.

How would I get rid of this extra system space?
Thank you

 

[MacDawg]

Can you help us out be describing your system?

What Mac are you using?
What macOS?
Does it have a HDD or SSD?
Is it using HFS or APFS?

Do you use Time Machine?
Do you use Carbon Copy Cloner? (both can create snapshots)

*****
Typically the issue is with Time Machine and local snapshots
But if it has been enabled, Carbon Cop Cloner can also create snapshots
That was my issue and consumed 480GB on my MBP before I found it and resolved it

@Weaselboy is a wizard at such things, so hopefully he will chime in after you tell us about your system

 

[falcon2908]

Can you help us out be describing your system?

What Mac are you using?
What macOS?
Does it have a HDD or SSD?
Is it using HFS or APFS?

Do you use Time Machine?
Do you use Carbon Copy Cloner? (both can create snapshots)

*****
Typically the issue is with Time Machine and local snapshots
But if it has been enabled, Carbon Cop Cloner can also create snapshots
That was my issue and consumed 480GB on my MBP before I found it and resolved it

@Weaselboy is a wizard at such things, so hopefully he will chime in after you tell us about your system

Hello,
I use MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014)
My OS is High Sierra v10.13.5
I'm using Macintosh HD
I dont know if its using HFS or APFS
Yes I have time machine but it's not configured.
I do not use Carbon Copy Cloner and it is not installed or downloaded on my system

 

[Weaselboy]

Time Machine turned will create local snapshots like MacDawg mentioned. If you just ignore them, they should eventually delete on their own after a couple days.

Or you can run this command in Terminal to erase them now.

tmutil  listlocalsnapshotdates / |grep 20|while read f; do tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $f; done

If that does not fix it, sometimes the system storage is correct and just that readout is wrong because the Spotlight index is corrupted. Run this command in Terminal to reindex Spotlight (give it a half hour or so to complete) then see how it is and let us know.

sudo mdutil -E /

 

[falcon2908]

Time Machine turned will create local snapshots like MacDawg mentioned. If you just ignore them, they should eventually delete on their own after a couple days.

Or you can run this command in Terminal to erase them now.

tmutil  listlocalsnapshotdates / |grep 20|while read f; do tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $f; done

If that does not fix it, sometimes the system storage is correct and just that readout is wrong because the Spotlight index is corrupted. Run this command in Terminal to reindex Spotlight (give it a half hour or so to complete) then see how it is and let us know.

sudo mdutil -E /

Hi, I tried your method...however now it shows the system storage as 91 Gigs instead of 80

Also, my Time machine app is not configured btw

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi, I tried your method...however now it shows the system storage as 91 Gigs instead of 80

Also, my Time machine app is not configured btw

If you have Time Machine off, it won't make those snapshots.

Try the Spotlight reindex and let us know.

 

[falcon2908]

If you have Time Machine off, it won't make those snapshots.

Try the Spotlight reindex and let us know.

I have tried that and it said indexing enabled, however there was barely any change to to my storage
https://image.ibb.co/eATx5T/Screen_Shot_2018_06_22_at_12_35_16_am.png

 

[Weaselboy]

I have tried that and it said indexing enabled, however there was barely any change to to my storage

That means it is reindexing. Give it time to finish.

If you bring up Spotlight you can see a blue progress bar showing Indexing... like in this screenshot.

 

[keysofanxiety]

I have tried that and it said indexing enabled, however there was barely any change to to my storage
https://image.ibb.co/eATx5T/Screen_Shot_2018_06_22_at_12_35_16_am.png

Could you run OmniDiskSweeper and screenshot the results please?

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/

Don't delete anything, this should show what's taking up the space however. Might be an iOS backup or something.

 

[falcon2908]

Could you run OmniDiskSweeper and screenshot the results please?

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/

Don't delete anything, this should show what's taking up the space however. Might be an iOS backup or something.

Heya, before reading your comment I had used Dr. Cleaner to scan for unnecesary hidden files. As a result, I was able to clear 50 Gigabytes of data
Then I read your comment and I used omniDiskSweeper to look for more files and I found this:

[doublepost=1529593734][/doublepost]

That means it is reindexing. Give it time to finish.

If you bring up Spotlight you can see a blue progress bar showing Indexing... like in this screenshot.

View attachment 767173

+1

 

[Weaselboy]

Heya, before reading your comment I had used Dr. Cleaner to scan for unnecesary hidden files. As a result, I was able to clear 50 Gigabytes of data
Then I read your comment and I used omniDiskSweeper to look for more files and I found this:

By default ODS does not show some system and hidden files. Run it like this from Terminal to give it access to everything then check.

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

 

[tropicalfluff]

My system storage is taking up 80 Gigs of space for some reason. I don't think it's normal for it to take so much space. My applications and Documents are 12 Gigs and 10 Gigs.

I had a similar problem to falcon2908. My "system" was using 109GB of my 128GB storage. OmniDiskSweep was able to pinpoint 50GB of Excel archive files that I could delete. Unfortunately, the "system" ate up that 50GB almost immediately, so I contacted Apple Support chat.

They helped me to discover that my FileVault had been turned on and the encryption process had gone awry. To check that, click Apple icon --> System Preferences --> FileVault. If the greyed-out box says "Turn Off FileVault..." then your FileVault is turned ON. To turn it off and decrypt your disk, click on the padlock at the bottom left of the page and enter your password or recovery key. The decryption process is long - hours or even days - so be prepared for that.

 

[EugW]

I can't remember, but are iPhone/iPad backups stored in there too?

 

[devejonn]

Hello Everyone,
you can say that i'm having a problem right now with the system storage, i read before that it's normal for the system to take up 50 Gigabytes of your storage but i was wondering if it's really true and maybe there's a chance that i can reduce it since i pretty much need more Storage.

Help would be appreciated.

 

[tropicalfluff]

I can't remember, but are iPhone/iPad backups stored in there too?

I suppose they could be, but mine aren't synced to do that.

 

[crv716]

Could you run OmniDiskSweeper and screenshot the results please?

https://www.omnigroup.com/more/

Don't delete anything, this should show what's taking up the space however. Might be an iOS backup or something.

So I am having the same issue with my MacBook. But when I ran OmniGroup, this is what it shows for pictures. I find this strange because I have iCloud photo optimization enabled. Does this seem right? I don't get why there is so much room taken up by pics and why there are two almost matching Libraries. Can anyone advise?

 

[Weaselboy]

It looks like what happened there is you had the older iPhoto app on there and a matching library file for it, then when the updated Photos app came along, it imported the iPhoto library and made its own Photos library, so now you have both. If you are sure all the iPhotos images got imported to Photos, you can delete the older iPhoto library.

That said, it won't save much space. Give this a read.

http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/the-hard-link-between-photos-and-iphoto/

 

[Modmike]

I am having a hell of a time with crazy system storage fluctuations. I never used Time Machine, used every software mentioned in this thread, re-indexed 3 times but still no love.

In fact, it was at 71 GB and suddenly jumped to 93 GB after a reindex.

Is there any way to directly access the system partition to clean it?

 

[samblert1]

I am having a hell of a time with crazy system storage fluctuations. I never used Time Machine, used every software mentioned in this thread, re-indexed 3 times but still no love.

In fact, it was at 71 GB and suddenly jumped to 93 GB after a reindex.

Is there any way to directly access the system partition to clean it?

Just used OmniDiskSweeper to really breakdown and figure out why my "System" storage was so high (66 GB on a 128 GB SSD, MacBook Air 11" early 2015) and it was mostly cached Outlook files from it being included with my MS Office download (like 50,000 emails), almost 30 GB worth. I've attached an image of where these files were found through OmniDiskSweeper for future reference as this post was riddled with half answers.

Perhaps clearing email caches is the solution here if Time Machine is off?