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Over 400GB in other on my 1 TB startup disk
- Thread starter kevthecab
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Not sure what the problem may be or what the ‘last’ thing you may have done is but I would check to see if its indexing; shut-down and restart; take a good look at Activity Monitor etc. May be off topic a bit but I ran into a similar situation once and tracked it down to having subscribed to several podcasts.....that were video podcasts and downloading 30-60 min. videos. Also check your icloud storage situation. I’ve seen this before but can’t seem to remember the particulars.
1. Do a getinfo on the disk in the finder. Are you showing a lot of disk tied up in "purgeable"?
2. If so run a program such as DaisyDisk that shows you where most of your disk, including some of the caches, is being used. You can use it to reduce things in the "purgeable" category, as well as personal files.
Unfortunately the "purgeable" will likely return. It is used for things like caches, TM snapshots, etc. IOS device backups can also take a lot of space.
I had set warning messages for when my available disk space was <20%. I was getting them constantly, as my purgeable numer was almost a terabyte. So I had to turn them off. I just let the OS handle it, and as long as my free + puregable is >= 30% or so I don't worry about it.
2. If so run a program such as DaisyDisk that shows you where most of your disk, including some of the caches, is being used. You can use it to reduce things in the "purgeable" category, as well as personal files.
Unfortunately the "purgeable" will likely return. It is used for things like caches, TM snapshots, etc. IOS device backups can also take a lot of space.
I had set warning messages for when my available disk space was <20%. I was getting them constantly, as my purgeable numer was almost a terabyte. So I had to turn them off. I just let the OS handle it, and as long as my free + puregable is >= 30% or so I don't worry about it.
I did run the daisy disk app & it says I have 390gb of hiiden files! No idea what they could be. I cant find them in finder even with hidden files turned on??
[automerge]1603279968[/automerge]
Just checked mine in every way posssible....~13GB 'other'....Have you looked on the Apple Forums? They are a very good source (also) for solving problems such as this....a lot of expert advice. The odds of you being the only one to see or have this issue are slim.
Quick search of AF gave this :
[IMG alt="Kappy"]https://discussions.apple.com/assets/avatar/5622b257a40d781f/848f5d260fe1fb746a69fb4ae000cecf4cd80f862181dbc545d5c1adf4077a55[/IMG]
Kappy
User level:Level 10
(358,653 points)
DesktopsSpeciality level out of ten: 1
Answer:A:
What is This Other Category in Storage Display
What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?
"Other" contains any of the following types of files. They cannot necessarily be deleted wholesale. Furthermore, “Other” is not an actual, physical file. Rather it’s an arbitrary category to which the files are assigned for display convenience.
Get Correct Storage Information
Do not use the information from the Storage section of the About This Mac dialog. Ignore the Storage information as it is typically wrong. To find out the correct information for any disk: Select a Desktop disk icon. Press Command-I to open the Get Info window and look at the topmost panel displayed. You will find the disk information displayed for Capacity, Available, and Used. If you have more than one disk/partition then repeat for each one on your Desktop.
The categories found in the Storage section of About This Mac is simply an arbitrary way of displaying files on your drive. There are no such categories actually on the drive.
FYI: it was dated 09/07/2020....maybe gives some explanation of what you're looking at?
[IMG alt="Kappy"]https://discussions.apple.com/assets/avatar/5622b257a40d781f/848f5d260fe1fb746a69fb4ae000cecf4cd80f862181dbc545d5c1adf4077a55[/IMG]
Kappy
User level:Level 10
(358,653 points)
DesktopsSpeciality level out of ten: 1
Answer:A:
What is This Other Category in Storage Display
What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?
"Other" contains any of the following types of files. They cannot necessarily be deleted wholesale. Furthermore, “Other” is not an actual, physical file. Rather it’s an arbitrary category to which the files are assigned for display convenience.
- System temporary files
- macOS system folders
- Archives and disk images (.zip, .iso, etc.)
- Personal user data
- Files from the user’s library (Application Support, iCloud files, screensavers, etc.)
- Cache files
- Fonts, plugins, extensions
- Hidden files
- Other files that are not recognized by a Spotlight search
Get Correct Storage Information
Do not use the information from the Storage section of the About This Mac dialog. Ignore the Storage information as it is typically wrong. To find out the correct information for any disk: Select a Desktop disk icon. Press Command-I to open the Get Info window and look at the topmost panel displayed. You will find the disk information displayed for Capacity, Available, and Used. If you have more than one disk/partition then repeat for each one on your Desktop.
The categories found in the Storage section of About This Mac is simply an arbitrary way of displaying files on your drive. There are no such categories actually on the drive.
FYI: it was dated 09/07/2020....maybe gives some explanation of what you're looking at?
It’s right there in the daisy disk report: Time Machine snapshots.
Catalina will allocate up to the last 20% of your boot drive’s space for these, before it begins deleting old ones. So everything is normal. It’s just poor UI on Apple’s part.
I think 'Kappy' as I posted above (note his user level!) is saying the same thing in so many words.....
Glad you figured it out!
Per 'Kappy' : do a CMD-I on you drive icon....get what your storage account numbers REALLY are....
I saw that but when I deleted the snapshot files, it didnt reduce so thought it wasnt that.....
So there's nothing I can do about this 20% even if I decide not to use time machine?
I can’t say, without knowing what steps you used to delete snapshots. If you can roll backward in TM even with the TM drive disconnected, the snapshots are still there.
I don’t use TM, but if I did, I would probably partition my boot drive to keep the snapshots in check. It’s not elegant, and would require you to resize things later if your core storage increased, but I already do a similar system with my two internal drives anway
If you have disabled Time Machine, in terminal you can enter:
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-10-23-011519
You can then delete them individually by:
sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2020-10-23-011519
However as stated
there are a lot of files that you can't control.
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-10-23-011519
You can then delete them individually by:
sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2020-10-23-011519
However as stated
there are a lot of files that you can't control.