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Macbook Air running out of storage

cami3900

cami3900

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 8, 2019
14
4
Copenhagen
Hello,

For the past month or so, my Macbook has been bombarding me with "running out of space" messages. I have read countless articles and forums, but I still have not solved the issue. System takes up 90 GB of my 120 GB.

I tried downloading DaisyDisk and OmniDiskSweeper, but they only show me where 30 GB of storage goes, so I tried to locate it manually with cmd+shift+. - which shows me that my Library takes up over 60 GB. I tried to go through all folder manually, but I still cannot find the culprit.

I got an external harddrive, and moved a lot of files from iCloud to the harddrive. This freed up a few GB, but that only lasted a few days.

I can't install any updates, because there isn't enough space. I am considering a full reboot, but also reluctant, because I have Adobe and Microsoft Office licenses from schools which I no longer attend, and therefore afraid I can't reinstall after a reboot.

Does anyone have any tips from similar experiences?
 
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Which Macbook Air is it? (year?)

Option 1: If it's before the recent redesign (which is a safe guess) you can upgrade the internal storage. Instructions found here (they also apply to the Macbook Air):

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...sd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-191#post-27523329

Option 2: Carrying around 1TB in fast flash storage via USB and moving your home folder to it.
Drive - https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...tate-drives/portable-ssd-t5-1tb-mu-pa1t0b-am/
Moving home folder (where iTunes, Photos, Movies are stored to your external drive) - https://www.lifewire.com/move-macs-home-folder-new-location-2260157

With option 2 it's cheaper and easier to do but you'd need to have your drive attached at all times if you'd like access to your movies, music, etc.
 
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ruslan120 said:
Which Macbook Air is it? (year?)

Option 1: If it's before the recent redesign (which is a safe guess) you can upgrade the internal storage. Instructions found here (they also apply to the Macbook Air):

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...sd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/page-191#post-27523329

Option 2: Carrying around 1TB in fast flash storage via USB and moving your home folder to it.
Drive - https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...tate-drives/portable-ssd-t5-1tb-mu-pa1t0b-am/
Moving home folder (where iTunes, Photos, Movies are stored to your external drive) - https://www.lifewire.com/move-macs-home-folder-new-location-2260157

With option 2 it's cheaper and easier to do but you'd need to have your drive attached at all times if you'd like access to your movies, music, etc.
Click to expand...


It's a Macbook Air (early) 2014.

I didn't know you could move the Library folder to an external drive, so thank you for that tip! I would still prefer to find out what the clutter is. It kinda seems like a bug. I have cleaned out a lot of unused apps and stuff, probably 15 GB, and I'm still left with less than 4 GB of space shortly after. I can't see that I'm using more than 20-30 GB with apps and documents.
 
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TimothyR734 said:
https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/macos-purgeable-storage-hard-drive/ this might be of help too
Click to expand...

Yeah, I already stumbled upon that article. Still a mystery. I haven't used Time Machine at all until two weeks ago, when I purchased an external harddrive. I don't see any purgeable space on DaisyDisk, as I see other people sharing screenshots from Daisy Disk.

I ran Onyx, and it freed up 1 GB. Still only leaves me with 5 GB, and that's 6 GB short of the space it needs to run the latest system update.
 
I uncheck the rebuilding ones, then I click on options for cleaning and uncheck the system ones for just to be safe and under options if you use a time machine it gives you an option to delete local snapshots which does take up space
 

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TimothyR734 said:
I uncheck the rebuilding ones, then I click on options for cleaning and uncheck the system ones for just to be safe and under options if you use a time machine it gives you an option to delete local snapshots which does take up space
Click to expand...
Thanks for the screenshots! It says there are no local snapshots under Time Machine. And now, a few hours after I ran it and cleared 1 GB, the storage is back down to 4 GB. It's very strange... I might have to reboot to get to the bottom of this.

Will Time Machine be able to save my license keys for Adobe and Microsoft Office, that I no longer can access?

UPDATE: I took a screenshot of the User info, which has been at 60GB ever since I started looking into this. As soon as I took the screenshot, it went down to 10 GB. Any idea why?? I restarted the laptop, but it hasn't made a difference in over all storage (50 GB have not been cleared).
 

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Time Machine should keep a back up of those keys but I am not quite sure I don't know about adobe but if you ever could access Microsoft Office they do have a plan its $9.99 a month and you can install it on 5 devices even your iPhone/iPad if you have those I used to have the college edition but they were slow at updating office so I went to the plan :)
 
TimothyR734 said:
Another question is your internal ssd the one that came with the MacBook Air if you bought it new or if its a used MacBook Air that might have an after market ssd
[doublepost=1562632832][/doublepost]http://www.buildcomputers.net/trim-support.html
[doublepost=1562632876][/doublepost]http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/29/use-trimforce-trim-ssd-mac-os-x/
Click to expand...
It's the one that came with the Macbook Air.

I'm not sure what you mean I should check out. Do you mean simply check out how my mac shows storage is used? If so, that's where it says 90+ GB is used by System.
 
Ive tried to help as best as I can I don't know much about SSD's as I use HDD's but if your ssd is not using trim it might not be freeing up all the space from the article I read, like for example I have over 400MB in photos but if I need the space I can check store in the cloud and then delete them for the space
 
One big storage eater is your email. All the attachments are stored and, if you're like most folks, you're probably saving many of them to a photo file, maybe a work file for pdf's so now you have 2 cops of each stored. I'm fanatical about deleting attachments and email I don't need to keep and a quick look at my email files shows I'm still storing about 16Gb. If you text on your computer you may get the same thing. I'm pretty good about deleting threads I don't need so I keep that pretty low. Maybe this will help.

https://www.lifewire.com/stored-attachments-from-os-x-mail-1172807
 
tv.engineer.bill said:
One big storage eater is your email. All the attachments are stored and, if you're like most folks, you're probably saving many of them to a photo file, maybe a work file for pdf's so now you have 2 cops of each stored. I'm fanatical about deleting attachments and email I don't need to keep and a quick look at my email files shows I'm still storing about 16Gb. If you text on your computer you may get the same thing. I'm pretty good about deleting threads I don't need so I keep that pretty low. Maybe this will help.

https://www.lifewire.com/stored-attachments-from-os-x-mail-1172807
Click to expand...

Hi, thanks for the tip! I don't use the mail app on my Mac, so I figured that wouldn't be it. I just checked the folder, and it is empty. I'm still having no luck finding the clutter :/
 
You might try this out go to disk utility then view then view all devices run first aid on the topmost one that should be you ssd if your boot partition is corrupted that could be part of the reason
 

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Download DiskWave from here:
https://diskwave.barthe.ph
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 drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any drive.
Now, you'll see what's ON the drive, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.
 
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Fishrrman said:
Download DiskWave from here:
https://diskwave.barthe.ph
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 drives in plain English (no ridiculous graphical formats).
Click on any drive.
Now, you'll see what's ON the drive, listed in order of "largest to smallest".
You can easily locate what's eating up your space.
Click to expand...

I downloaded it and ran it, and look what it came up with. I checked show hidden files. It doesn't add up to 118 GB.
[doublepost=1562882162][/doublepost]
TimothyR734 said:
You might try this out go to disk utility then view then view all devices run first aid on the topmost one that should be you ssd if your boot partition is corrupted that could be part of the reason
Click to expand...
That might be it. It comes up like this. I'm not sure I understand what it suggest - that I reboot and then run first aid?
 

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