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I moved some folders around on my system (from dropbox to google drive). This triggered a bunch of processing and eventually left my "System" taking 80+Gb's of space instead of 25-30Gb where it originally was. I have since deleted dropbox and google drive is synced up fine and only containing 13gb's. But System has been left in this state and now I have almost no storage space left!
user5797668
Posted 2016-12-09T19:28:52.380
Reputation: 181
7
You can use ncdu to analyze your disk usage. From its homepage:
Ncdu is a disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface. It is designed to find space hogs on a remote server where you don't have an entire graphical setup available, but it is a useful tool even on regular desktop systems. Ncdu aims to be fast, simple and easy to use, and should be able to run in any minimal POSIX-like environment with ncurses installed.
It is available on homebrew (brew install ncdu).
Try
ncdu $HOME
or
ncdu /
thiagowfx
Posted 2016-12-09T19:28:52.380
Reputation: 1 514
2
You can install and see what is taking up your drive with:
Of course you can do it manually:
sudo su - and type your password when askedcd / - start on root folderdu -d1 | sort -g - shows the biggest folder lastdu -d1 | sort -g and go as deep as you need
Zina
Posted 2016-12-09T19:28:52.380
Reputation: 1 855
OK, I got this same answer on another forum which I why I had to ask again. These programs don't show system storage (as far as I can see). They will show me a detailed view of whats in Applications, Documents, Text Files etc.. All the stuff that is blue, purple, red and green in that image. The yellow stuff is not visualized by these inventory programs. This is a deeper problem. Those 80gb's were essentially generated overnight when I moved some folders around. – user5797668 – 2016-12-09T20:22:41.620
What about the manual method? this (as it is run by root) will for sure show the usage of the folders (and I deleted the -h option as sort on OSX sorts numbers only and not the M,G,..) – Zina – 2016-12-09T20:40:26.000
And unmount all network drives, disconnect USB drives. – Zina – 2016-12-09T20:43:33.543
are there any known issues with cloud filesystems like dropbox or google drive adding 80 hidden gigabytes?? – user5797668 – 2016-12-09T20:46:06.990
@user5797668 - No – Ramhound – 2016-12-09T20:46:55.233
None that I know of. I use both GD and DB on my work MBP and it is fine. On my Home MBP I have only the GD App and use DB only on Web. – Zina – 2016-12-09T20:48:14.590
If you suspect that it is in you GD or DB folders, use the manual method with starting point your user home directory. – Zina – 2016-12-09T20:48:59.090
i deleted the dropbox app. the GD directory itself has 13gb. What I'm saying is that I moved some folders (about 3gb worth) from DB to GD and for 6 hours the cpu was at 100% fans spinning loud.. allday.. the net result was my System category blowing up to 80gb. thats why i suspect these cloud providers – user5797668 – 2016-12-09T21:23:28.560
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You can install OmniDiskSweeper to browse and put to trash enormous files. I had a similar problem and it turned out to be old dev-related frameworks and simulators I didn't use anymore taking up to 50Gb, all placed under the "System" category in the Storage Manager. I guess you can achieve the same results without the soft I linked above, but it helped me locate and delete these files in a couple of minutes, so it's the best solution I found so far for an issue like this !
Antoine Auffray
Posted 2016-12-09T19:28:52.380
Reputation: 111
0
Also check the /cores directory - you can delete all the files here. Its only to debug which application is coring and why. You can always wait for it to happen again and go ahead and delete all the files here to reclaim disk space.
Megageek
Posted 2016-12-09T19:28:52.380
Reputation: 1
I'm not familiar with coring. Google does not give meaningful result. Are you sure it's not a typo? – Vylix – 2017-07-14T20:54:54.387
When an application ends abnormally, it can generate a core file stored under /cores. The size of these files are big and they build up over time. So, you can delete them to make space in System. – Megageek – 2017-07-15T23:31:55.877
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If you have Time Machine active maybe you have pending snapshots to be backed up. Check it:
sudo du -hs /.MobileBackups
Miguel Sesma
Posted 2016-12-09T19:28:52.380
Reputation: 101
Yes, My mac is meeting that problem, I have no idea why the storage report system is taking the huge storage. – Kevin – 2017-02-21T14:23:55.167