huge "system" file (>600GB) on Mac Pro 2013

[Eric Brody]

I just looked at the available space on the 1TB SSD on my 2013 Mac Pro, running Mac OS 10.13.6 High Sierra, 64GB RAM and found that I have but 65GB available. This is because the “system” takes up OVER 600GB!!!! I started with a basic "get info" on the Mac Pro boot SSD icon on my desktop. When I saw that there was only a small amount of space, I went to the Apple menu and chose "about this Mac," looked at "storage" and then "manage." This showed the huge "system" of >600GB and "system" is grayed out so I cannot look within it. I had previously emptied the trash, rebooted the machine, and went through each of the folders on the "Eric Brodys Mac Pro" listed in "devices" in the finder and came up with a total of 333GB. . Clearly I am either doing something wrong or the machine is misbehaving.

I do not use Time Machine, I prefer Carbon Copy Cloner. I looked at every visible folder and found very little to eliminate. I looked at "hidden" folders with command-shift-. and still it doesn't add up. My photos are stored on hard drives in my OWC Thunderbay, and for testing purposes, the Thunderbay is disconnected.I googled it and did not find anything helpful. I tried to do a screenshot of what is shown in the management section of about this Mac but it does not appear to show here (?)

Do I need to do a clean install? Would a simple reinstall from MacOS Recovery solve this? Would updating to Mojave fix it and free up the space I know must be there?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Eric

[langier]

Figured I should take a look on my system to see what it should look like...

On my 2009 vintage MacPro 4.1 (now flashed to 5.1), the System on the start-up SSD is listed at 278 GB. However, since I've added parts here and there for the last 10 years I still use the original 640 HD for some of my User files since a single 1TB drives seems a little small for a start-up on my main machine, so my system size not be accurate.

When I first checked the size of the system on my start up drive, though, it told me it was 395 GB before it settled down on the lower figure.

On my MBP 13, 2013, the system and all my apps take less than 100GB of the 500GB SSD, but it's newer and a set-up for travel, rather than every-day work.

Hard to believe that 35 years ago the System, an app or two plus all your files could fit on a 400KB 3.5-inch floppy!

Hope you find your problems bloating and get it fixed!

[Eric Brody]

Hi Larry,
Thanks, I started with the original Mac, purchased on April 18, 1984! All it had then was a 128k of RAM, a 400k floppy and not many apps at all. Yet, I loved it and here we are 35 years later with 512GB camera cards and huge hard drives and SSD's. Progress? Yes, I think so. Now, to get my >600GB system file down to a reasonable size 

[Joe Towner]

Give it some time to process out what it calls 'System Files' - it's the default tag until it figures out what something is.  Give it a few minutes to update.  I use a free tool called JDiskReport - http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/ - and it does a great job of giving me actual directory sizes and help track down what's using a lot of space.

[Aram Hăvărneanu]

Here is a tool that you can use to track down disk usage: http://www.derlien.com.

[Eric Brody]

SOLVED! Thanks to all who replied. Simply put, at first nothing seemed to work; I looked with Omnidisk Sweeper and Grand Perspective. Both were interesting but did not allow me to locate and get rid of whatever was bloating the system. I called and spoke with an Apple rep who also went through all the "standard" stuff to no avail. He ended up suggesting what I should have done from the start, that is to reinstall High Sierra with MacOS Recovery. I just finished that and with bated breath, checked the system to find it is a nice 33GB! Whew. Maybe my experience will help someone else, I hope so.

[BobShaw]

I don't know what your original problem was but identifying this should fairly easy.
It was possibly installers sitting on your desktop or a full trash.

Double Click the Macintosh HD hard disk (or whatever you have called it)
If your immediate question is "Where's that?" then you need to go Finder / Preferences and tick every box on each menu. The icon should then appear in Finder windows and on the desktop.

You should see a window with the System and everything else on the HDD.
Go View (top Menu) / Show View Options / Calculate All Sizes

After a period of time you will start to see the size of each folder. Find the big ones and address them.

When you have finished uncheck the Calculate All Sizes as it slows things down.

[bwana]

Daisy disk is really fast. The large time machine backups are usually the culprit and labeled 'purgeable'. Backups of your iOS devices can also suck a lot of storage.
Here's an easy way to delete those backups from the terminal
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/39287/how-can-i-manually-delete-old-backups-to-free-space-for-time-machine/55646

[vjbelle]

SOLVED! Thanks to all who replied. Simply put, at first nothing seemed to work; I looked with Omnidisk Sweeper and Grand Perspective. Both were interesting but did not allow me to locate and get rid of whatever was bloating the system. I called and spoke with an Apple rep who also went through all the "standard" stuff to no avail. He ended up suggesting what I should have done from the start, that is to reinstall High Sierra with MacOS Recovery. I just finished that and with bated breath, checked the system to find it is a nice 33GB! Whew. Maybe my experience will help someone else, I hope so.

I think you will find that your 'system' folder will once again gain in size.  The culprit is a hidden file/folder for time machine local snapshots.  Before the latest OS there was the ability to delete those files/folders but no more.  Apple won't allow those files to be tampered with.  In reality they play no role in the actual space of your drive as space is automatically allocated as needed. 

CCC, which is all I use, doesn't clone that file. 

Victor

[Eric Brody]

Victor, I believe you are correct as my system file has been slowly growing inexorably. I do not use time machine and would like to delete it by seem to be unable to do so.

I even googled "delete time machine app" and found only ways to delete backups which, according to my computer, I do not have.

Are you or any of the other smart folks on this forum able to delete the time machine app? I'm perfectly happy with CCC. Does anyone know how to get at and delete these files? Is this issue solved with Mojave?

Thanks to all.

Eric

[vjbelle]

Time machine cannot be deleted.  I don't understand why that app would 'still' makes local snapshots of the hard drive even if the app isn't used.  I have limited concerns since it really doesn't affect the overall space available for use. 

Victor

[Eric Brody]

Thanks for your reply Victor. Are you saying that the growing system is not really taking up "physical" space on the SSD and that I could safely ignore it?

I've looked at Time Machine it's definitely NOT running (I hope).

I even added my home folder to the list of things not backed up.

Not quite sure what to do at this point, ignore, wait until the system is huge again and reinstall High Sierra, or just go ahead and install Mojave.