Late 2014 Mac Mini Drive Question

[Boeingfan]

Hi All,

A couple of weeks ago I bought a secondhand late 2014 Mac mini. It has a 256gb system drive, and a second 500gb drive. I'm getting warnings that the system drive is full.

I have no idea why the system drive is full already. I moved the Photo's System Library to the second drive, so all that is on the system drive is macOS.

Going by the pictures you see below, I am wondering if someone could look at the drive structure and tell me, please, if it is set up correctly, or if there are duplications.The main drive has partitions or folders starting with SPCC M.2 PCIe SSD Media, then Container disk2, then Macintosh volumes, then Macintosh, then Macintosh snapshot, then Macintosh - Data. This is all double dutch to me, but I'm hoping there's a chunk of data leftover data from the last user which I can delete. I've looked in Finder at the system drive and found nothing but little folders with basic system stuff, but nothing that needs anywhere close to 256gb. I need your help to understand what I'm looking at, please. Thank you in advance.

 

[Bigwaff]

Yes, volume structures look correct. And, yes, your boot drive is full.

I moved the Photo's System Library to the second drive, so all that is on the system drive is macOS.

You may have to be extremely specific about how you "moved" the system Photo Library to the second drive. I suspect you may have copied it rather than reconfigured Photos to use it as the system Photo Library.

 

[Boeingfan]

Yes, volume structures look correct. And, yes, your boot drive is full.

You may have to be extremely specific about how you "moved" the system Photo Library to the second drive. I suspect you may have copied it rather than reconfigured Photos to use it as the system Photo Library.

I followed the instructions here on how to move the photos library by dragging it to the new drive and then setting it as the system photo library. I have also looked at the files contained in the pictures folder on the system drive and there aren’t any photos stored there, and I deleted the photos library file from that drive in finder.

Is there a way to see what the files are taking up so much space, apart from finder?

 

[Bigwaff]

There are third party utilities. I've used this one before...

DaisyDisk, the most popular disk space analyzer

Get a visual breakdown of your disk space in form of an interactive map, reveal the biggest space wasters, and remove them with a simple drag and drop.

daisydiskapp.com

 

[Fishrrman]

Download DiskWave from here:

DiskWave Homepage

It's small in size and free.

Open DiskWave and go to the preferences.
Put a checkmark in "show invisible files".
Close preferences.

The DiskWave window shows you all your volumes and drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any item "on the left". Give it time to "digest".
Now, look to the right, you'll see what's ON the volume, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.

 

[Marc Simard]

I followed the instructions here on how to move the photos library by dragging it to the new drive and then setting it as the system photo library. I have also looked at the files contained in the pictures folder on the system drive and there aren’t any photos stored there, and I deleted the photos library file from that drive in finder.

Is there a way to see what the files are taking up so much space, apart from finder?

Your drive setup looks good. I also have a late 2014 mini, and it looks like you are customized by having a second drive (M.2 NVME SSD using an adapter card).

You can see more details on usage by going to System Settings -> General -> About -> Storage Settings.
It will give you an overview of storage by file type as well as application.

 

[Boeingfan]

There are third party utilities. I've used this one before...

DaisyDisk, the most popular disk space analyzer

Get a visual breakdown of your disk space in form of an interactive map, reveal the biggest space wasters, and remove them with a simple drag and drop.

daisydiskapp.com

I like this app, thank you. It appears that the culprit is iMessages storing well over 200gb of message attachments.

 

[Boeingfan]

Download DiskWave from here:

DiskWave Homepage

It's small in size and free.

Open DiskWave and go to the preferences.
Put a checkmark in "show invisible files".
Close preferences.

The DiskWave window shows you all your volumes and drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any item "on the left". Give it time to "digest".
Now, look to the right, you'll see what's ON the volume, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.

Thank you, it is a useful app. Apparently iMessage attachments are the culprit. Damn it 😁

 

[Boeingfan]

Your drive setup looks good. I also have a late 2014 mini, and it looks like you are customized by having a second drive (M.2 NVME SSD using an adapter card).

You can see more details on usage by going to System Settings -> General -> About -> Storage Settings.
It will give you an overview of storage by file type as well as application.

Your drive setup looks good. I also have a late 2014 mini, and it looks like you are customized by having a second drive (M.2 NVME SSD using an adapter card).

You can see more details on usage by going to System Settings -> General -> About -> Storage Settings.
It will give you an overview of storage by file type as well as application.

Thank you for your reply Marc.

The steps you gave seem to be different on Monterey (?) so I went to System Preferences -> General and I get the screen below. I can't see any About tab or pathway...

So in response to the information you've all helped me with (and I am very grateful!) thus far:

System Information tells me that I have 101GB of iMessage data, with 180GB of Photo's data.

DaisyDisk tells me that I have 219GB of iMessage data, with 1.8GB of Photo's data.

DiskWave doesn't mention anything about iMessage data.

So needless to say I'm a tad confused now

 

[macnavarra]

What about a secondhand Apple Fusion Drive?

 

[tonmischa]

System Information tells me that I have 101GB of iMessage data, with 180GB of Photo's data.

System Information is unfortunately not a reliable source. It will eventually get it right, but it can take a really long time.

DaisyDisk tells me that I have 219GB of iMessage data, with 1.8GB of Photo's data.

Actually it says "Messages", so it could also be Mails?
Is that a realistic value? Do you have so many attachments?

DiskWave doesn't mention anything about iMessage data.

Probably because you selected "usr" (instead of "users").
Also: DiskWave was last updated in 2016. So dont trust it.

To be honest, I would simply try to open a Finder Window of my home Directory, press CMD+J, select "Calculate Sizes", select "Show Library Folder" (that is important!), select "Sort by Size" and follow the trail to the biggest folders. Thats what Finder was made for

 

[Boeingfan]

System Information is unfortunately not a reliable source. It will eventually get it right, but it can take a really long time.


Actually it says "Messages", so it could also be Mails?
Is that a realistic value? Do you have so many attachments?


Probably because you selected "usr" (instead of "users").
Also: DiskWave was last updated in 2016. So dont trust it.

To be honest, I would simply try to open a Finder Window of my home Directory, press CMD+J, select "Calculate Sizes", select "Show Library Folder" (that is important!), select "Sort by Size" and follow the trail to the biggest folders. Thats what Finder was made for

Ah, I see.

It is possible that I could have that amount of data in iMessage attachments as I have never deleted iMessages and the related settings are set to keep forever. I've had an iPhone since the 3GS, so that's a lot of history I guess. Additionally, I don't have email set up on this Mac, I use my PC for that.

So, moving on to Finder; when I open it and click on Macintosh HDD, the press CMD+J, the window below opens up. Could this be different to yours as I'm running Monterey? I don't see Calculate Sizes, etc..

 

[tonmischa]

When in Finder, press CMD+SHIFT+H . This will open your "home" directory. (The folder that contains all of your peersonal data. You should see folders named "Pictures", "Movies", "Music", "Documents", "Desktop", and so on.)

Then press CMD+J and continue from there.

 

[EugW]

macOS still irritates me about how it manages iMessage attachments. As it doesn't properly.

For example, this may not apply to the OP, but if you have iCloud, there is absolutely no need for iMessage to have 100 GB of attachments locally.

 

[Boeingfan]

When in Finder, press CMD+SHIFT+H . This will open your "home" directory. (The folder that contains all of your peersonal data. You should see folders named "Pictures", "Movies", "Music", "Documents", "Desktop", and so on.)

Then press CMD+J and continue from there.

Thank you so much! It's these little tiny missing steps that make all the difference. I appreciate your help very much.

 

[Boeingfan]

macOS still irritates me about how it manages iMessage attachments. As it doesn't properly.

For example, this may not apply to the OP, but if you have iCloud, there is absolutely no need for iMessage to have 100 GB of attachments locally.

I happily agree with you on this. I had no idea that any iMessages and/or attachments would be stored locally. I'll investigate to see if there is a way to turn off iMessage on my Mac as I don't need it, and it will save a bucket of space.

 

[carylee2002]

I use ccleaner freeware. The problem with older mini's is that as you get to newer OS..you have less headroom.

 

[Boeingfan]

I may have found a bit of an 'out'... The preferences in iMessage on my Mac mini allows the option to change the saved history duration per device, as indicated in the first screenshot below. So, I've changed it to only keep iMessage for 30 days. There appears to be a sizeable difference, pardon the pun.

 

[EugW]

I may have found a bit of an 'out'... The preferences in iMessage allows the option to change the saved history duration per device, as indicated in the first screenshot below. So, I've changed my Mac mini to only keep iMessage for 30 days. It appears to have made a sizeable difference. Pardon the pun.

View attachment 2491171View attachment 2491175
View attachment 2491176

Are you sure it’s per device? I was under the impression it’s with all sync’d devices.

 

[Boeingfan]

Are you sure it’s per device? I was under the impression it’s with all sync’d devices.

Well, it says "from your device", not devices (plural), or iCloud, so hoping that it does what it says it will, that's what I've asked it to do. It's cleared out all but the last 30 days worth of iMessages from my Mac mini.

When I look at iCloud on my iPhone, the 'Keep messages' duration is set to forever, and there is 283GB worth of iMessage data stored. I have clicked on 'Sync Now' in iCloud on my iPhone, and I can still see messages going back to August 2024, and beyond, with no issue to just keep scrolling back. So, it seems to do what it says on the tin, thank goodness.

 

[Boeingfan]

Are you sure it’s per device? I was under the impression it’s with all sync’d devices.

Hello. I got myself a newer 2020 M1 Mac mini a few days ago, and thought I'd let you know that the same steps I explained above on the 2014 Monterey Mac mini have a very different outcome on the 2020 Sequoia Mac mini. As shown before, the 2014 mini removes messages older than 30 days from that device only, as indicated in the screenshots posted earlier. The 2020 mini, however, deletes messages older than 30 days from ALL devices. A very unwelcome change indeed. Here's some screenshots:

2014 Monterey Mac Mini

2020 Mac mini