My 1 tera drive on MBPro15 is almost full. (High Sierra 10.13.6)
“About This Mac” Storage map shows “System” using 499GB of space.
What is included here?
What is the best way to find large files I can delete from my drive?
I’ve already manually deleted old documents and video files.
Any easy way to find duplicate files on my drive?
Tempted to use some sort of utility, but suspect it will just cause more problems.
Suggestions?
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David
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About This Mac Shows System Using 499GB Of Space
Comments: 3 Responses to “About This Mac Shows System Using 499GB Of Space”
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Anything in your System Folder and Library folders would be included under System.
First, I would leave the About/Storage window up for a few minutes or even longer. It calculates things while it is there and you may see some of those numbers change as it looks at and categorize different files. See what happens after a while.
The best way to manage your storage is to click that Manage button right there in About/Storage. Then use various things there to see what you've got.
After that, if you still see a 499GB System, I would look at your System folder and Library folders (user and system-level) and get info on them to see what size they really are. Then maybe use Finder list view and check the size of each subfolder to figure out what is using the space. You've got to play detective. See How To View Folder Sizes if you haven't done that before. And also Taking a Hard Drive Inventory .
Thanks for the reply Gary,
Left the About/Storage window up for a while, but System was still about 500GB.
In the end, I just attached an external HD, and started archiving photos & video until I released about a Gig of drive space.
My About/Storage bar is still showing 500 GB allocated to "System", however.
It is now beyond my skill-set; I will just get on with life.
David: Well, when you get a chance, it doesn't hurt to just look through your System and Library folders. Once you find out which subfolder is huge, it can become obvious what is causing the issue. For instance, a video editor using Adobe software may just find that it is graphic app cache files or something.