15GB left out of 250Gb. Why?

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I am confused by this.

The Mac Book Pro is telling me that I have 15.91 GB left of space.

Normally I cull items and it goes back to around 75Gb, and that's every 1/4, so what is taking up such vast amounts of space I wonder all of a sudden?

No new software downloads.
The desk top = 4.7GB.
DropBox = 3GB
"All My Files" = 25GB
Movies = 1GB
Music = 3Gb
Pictures = 4GB
Applications = 30Gb

Trash = Empty.




Screen Shot 2018-04-26 at 21.15.56.png
 

Raz0rEdge

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Use a program like Disk Inventory X and run it, now look at the big boxes to see what those files are that are taking up the space.
 
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You may be experiencing Time Machine (TM) "snapshots", using your space? Do you have TM enabled?
 

Raz0rEdge

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You have a lot of documents. You should drill down in the Users folder and go see what that looks like and continue drilling based on the sizes you see.
 
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Unsure - will check in the morning, thanks.

Is there a logical way to do this, or shall I Google it in the morning ?
 

IWT


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You may be experiencing Time Machine (TM) "snapshots", using your space? Do you have TM enabled?

+1 for that advice.

With any tablet like the MacBook range, if you have Time Machine turned on, the Mac creates backups on your internal hard drive - called local snapshots. These are then off-loaded to your Time Machine external hard drive when it is connected.

So the question is - do you have Time Machine activated? And if yes, connect your Time Machine external hard drive and see if your free space increases.

Ian
 

pigoo3

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Normally I cull items and it goes back to around 75Gb, and that's every 1/4, so what is taking up such vast amounts of space I wonder all of a sudden?

Taking into account what's been suggested so far...and assuming from what you've said that this is a recent development...I would think real hard what may have been changed recently (computer settings or user habits)...and focus on that as the explanation for the issue.:)

- Nick
 

Rod


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Just out of curiosity can you use the Get Info command to check the size of your Documents Folder and you have not replied to the question about Time Machine. Are you using it or not or have you used it in the past.
 
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No Time Machine. Never have used it.

Documents Folder 2.4GB.

No real changes to my working practise.

Still struggling to work this out.

Thanks for the ideas thus far.
Screen Shot 2018-04-29 at 21.22.32.png

Screen Shot 2018-04-29 at 21.24.47.png
 
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Well, now you're down to 6.84GB left. Even though you don't use Time Machine, is it turned off?
 
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I have no real idea what happened, I chatted with a Mac person at Apple in Chat this evening, and we went through everything, we culled a few small items, but nothing major to get the space to around 15GB again.

I removed the iPhone and iPad back ups which again, were not huge and have denied them Auto access to the Mac going forward.

The other suggestion was upgrade to Sierra.

BINGO!

I now have .............. wait for it ................. 133GB of space.

Screen Shot 2018-04-30 at 00.03.01.png
 
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All the screen saves and the transcript with Mac are here

It's a DropBox with a pdf of the conversation and the files / screen saves.

you may find the info helpful.
 

Rod


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I have a feeling that this issue is somehow related to email. The fact that your storage is decreasing would seem to indicate something is continuing to store data on your device. If its not you it has to be coming from somewhere else. So either email or websites. Plain text seems to be the culprit and usually web sites would be in HTML (rich text) format but email can be stored as plain text but I'm not sure why this would be. Have you changed any Mail settings recently?
You might benefit from clearing your Mail cache.
 

IWT


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BTW, you have upgraded from macOS 10.11.6 to 10.13.4 which is High Sierra (Not Sierra) and, in the process, changed your filing system from OS X Extended (Journaled) to APFS (Apple File System). This change is a compulsory feature of macOS High Sierra when you have a Solid State Drive, as your MacBook does.

I am not implying that there is anything wrong - quite the opposite - the upgrade and change of File System may have been instrumental in solving your problem.

Ian
 
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Okay.
Mac Live Chat helped out this time as it happened again.

The HD dropped from 140Gb to around 15GB.

The problem?

I've taken a screen shot though it's a tad too large, but the gist is that Mail is setting up Logs. Why? No idea. In 6 weeks we had accrued 96GB. Yes, 96.

Now I have a Mail Alias on my desk top so I can cull these on a daily basis.

Any ideas?

But at least I know and now so does the forum should this happen to a.n.other.
 

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