royaldeadman Posted March 15, 2017 Share Posted March 15, 2017 Can you guys help me figure out my options because I am literally under 40gb of space left on my MacBook pro and I know all about keep stuff on the external hard drive so I want to know what is going on from 250 gb to now under 40. Your help is appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 15, 2017 Share Posted March 15, 2017 You say under 40GB but your screenshot says 54.21GB? The first diagram at the top shows that the System (OS X itself) is taking a good chunk of the space. Is this Sierra? Do you have an iTunes library on that drive? How big is it? I believe Sierra reports iTunes files as System files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 15, 2017 Author Share Posted March 15, 2017 Yeah my iTunes is on my external though. Here is another photo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 15, 2017 Share Posted March 15, 2017 I would try to disconnect the External to see if that changes anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnaud Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 Did you take the first picture while lots of apps were opened, or only with LPX launched? There also are a lot of hidden system files, for instance swap files that expand your virtual RAM, and do so by eating up disk space on a temporary basis (at least while RAM-voracious apps are opened). One example of this is within LPX itself, as regards virtual memory used by EXS24. Check out the Vritual Memory section of the article below to know more (it also includes a link to a section of the online help with even more info on that): https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203930 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eriksimon Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 A much better (more detailed) way of looking at sizes of folders is in the Finder itself (no need to open Disk Utility). First, make sure (Finder>Preferences) that the harddisk(s) is/are shown on the desktop. Now, doubleclick the harddisk, once the window is open, hit cmd-2, list view. Now hit cmd-J, a smaller settings panel will pop up, and make sure that Calculate all sizes is ticked there. Also make sure that the Size column is ticked. Then close the settings panel. Now you will see the sizes of your folders, and the sizes of what they contain, if you use the little disclosure triangles left of the folders. If you click on the Size header, the window will be sorted by size, easily identifying the biggest files or folders. Sometimes the system may need some time to calculate the sizes if you've just opened a folder, so be patient. The System folder itself is not visible, and that's good, it should not be touched anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 16, 2017 Author Share Posted March 16, 2017 I followed those steps and some of the steps actually weren't checked. I checked them and now I see how big my folders are. Now I'm just not sure if some of these preset items can be moved to external hard drives or what. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 16, 2017 Author Share Posted March 16, 2017 Under application support I see just a few folder that are GB large and was curious how do I know if I can move these to external? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 I followed those steps and some of the steps actually weren't checked. I checked them and now I see how big my folders are. Now I'm just not sure if some of these preset items can be moved to external hard drives or what. Have you tried my suggestion to disconnect the external and see if that changes anything? Before you consider moving anything, I would try to get to the bottom of why your "System" is taking so much space on your Flash storage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 16, 2017 Author Share Posted March 16, 2017 It could be a number of things but I just disconnected all external hard drives and now look at my space. So I have no idea what is going on. Thats weird it captured 76 gb because I'm seeing 77. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 Now I would try keeping the external disconnected and restarting your Mac. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 16, 2017 Author Share Posted March 16, 2017 When I restarted it, it automatically joined the external hard drive back up. But we're still at 78 gb so thats ok. Here is another photo that may help. I think logic library is taking up a lot of room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 When I restarted it, it automatically joined the external hard drive back up. But we're still at 78 gb so thats ok. Here is another photo that may help. I think logic library is taking up a lot of room. Physically disconnect the external hd from your Mac. Restart your Mac. Post a screenshot of your Mac's "About this Mac" storage pane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fisherking Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 you could delete the cache folder contents (there's one in the main library, one in the home library.) delete the contents, not the folders themselves. you can highlight everything in those folders, drag to the trash. empty the trash, reboot, check your storage again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 16, 2017 Author Share Posted March 16, 2017 Ok external is disconnected and I restarted it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 16, 2017 Author Share Posted March 16, 2017 Apparently I didn't fully let that load, here is the updated one with it really finalizing a full search. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 Thank you. That yellow "System" band on the left is abnormal. Your system shouldn't take anywhere near 90GB of space on your hard drive. Do you do anything else with this Mac? Do you use Xcode by any chance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
royaldeadman Posted March 16, 2017 Author Share Posted March 16, 2017 I don't know anything about anything. Consider me somewhat of a noob. I don't know what any folders on my mac contain besides for music and anything I download. I don't know what xcode is. This is all for music production. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 For reference, my Sierra System takes 7.22GB of space here. Try opening a Finder window to check the sizes of your System folders as Erik suggested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Cardenas Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 The built in storage display in macOS is very buggy and will consider a bunch of media files as System files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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