Over 700GB of System Data on M1 Max

[alanvitek]

This week I realized that I was running out of space on my 1TB drive. I haven't even had this computer a year yet and was stunned. Checked out Storage and it reported over 700GB of System Data files!

I let the System Information app run for a while and in about an hour about 300GB of that 700GB got reassigned to other tabs (like Applications and Documents) but I still had around 400GB of system files left which seemed large to me. I went through my Library folder and cleared out some cache files and temp stuff and that cleared out about another 100GB (the largest of which was iMovie cache stuff for a video project I had done and forgotten about).

Is ~275GB of system files normal? Is it something I should be concerned with finding/clearing, and if so, what's the best way to find where the rest of it is? I've been using the Documents viewer in System Information to try to find stuff, but it appears the biggest offenders have already been cleared away. I saw another thread talking about MacPaw and Omni Drive, but I've never used those kinds of apps before (never had to).

 

[wonderings]

Sounds crazy high. My M1 Max with 1 TB has 72 gigs for system data being used. I know if you don't have a Time Machine backup it does its own internal Time Machine backup to an extent and that will eat up a lot of hard drive space. It will free it up as it needs it. Not sure if this would account for 270 gigs of system data though.

 

[jav6454]

This week I realized that I was running out of space on my 1TB drive. I haven't even had this computer a year yet and was stunned. Checked out Storage and it reported over 700GB of System Data files!

I let the System Information app run for a while and in about an hour about 300GB of that 700GB got reassigned to other tabs (like Applications and Documents) but I still had around 400GB of system files left which seemed large to me. I went through my Library folder and cleared out some cache files and temp stuff and that cleared out about another 100GB (the largest of which was iMovie cache stuff for a video project I had done and forgotten about).

Is ~275GB of system files normal? Is it something I should be concerned with finding/clearing, and if so, what's the best way to find where the rest of it is? I've been using the Documents viewer in System Information to try to find stuff, but it appears the biggest offenders have already been cleared away. I saw another thread talking about MacPaw and Omni Drive, but I've never used those kinds of apps before (never had to).

Check that you don't have internal Time Machine. That usually is the cause.

 

[alanvitek]

Thanks @wonderings and @jav6454 - I checked my time machine settings and it doesn't look like anything has been turned on or set for backups. Is "internal" time machine a more behind the scenes thing / somewhere else to look?

 

[jav6454]

Have you checked temporary files?

If TM is off, then don't worry about that and move to the next possibility

 

[wonderings]

I think even with it off it does it's own thing. I had this problem a while back. There was a unix command I found that cleared all the local snapshots up and freed a ton of space.

 

[alanvitek]

Found it! Long story short, I had imported old backup of photos from an external drive (about 200GB) into the Photos app so it could crunch it and do the facial recognition stuff. After we were done with that project I had deleted the Album from the Photos app thinking that would also delete the photos themselves. Nope. A 200 GB folder sitting inside the package contents of the Photos app (which marked it as System Files).

Down to 50GB total system files now after some additional cleanup of temp/cache files from other apps (Xcode mostly).

Thanks again for everyone's help!

 

[jav6454]

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. What's the current storage count now?

 

[alanvitek]

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Found it! Long story short, I had imported old backup of photos from an external drive (about 200GB) into the Photos app so it could crunch it and do the facial recognition stuff. After we were done with that project I had deleted the Album from the Photos app thinking that would also delete the photos themselves. Nope. A 200 GB folder sitting inside the package contents of the Photos app (which marked it as System Files).

Down to 50GB total system files now after some additional cleanup of temp/cache files from other apps (Xcode mostly).

Thanks again for everyone's help!

Nice!

But yeah, as others have said, everyone should make sure "Back Up Automatically" is NOT checked in Time Machine Preferences. Otherwise, unless you have an external backup drive permanently connected, it will create hourly backups of your drive.... onto your drive. Which would be cool, as it would be nice to have for that occasional time someone does something really stupid and "I lost my entire thesis, aaaaaaaagh", except that it basically doubles your SSD usage. Just make sure you do regular backups one way or another, including off-site (eg. cloud, or swapping external drives back and forth from your parent's house).