iMac storage problem with "other" storage

[Tom75]

Hi all,

I have a 2017 iMac Retina 5k 27 inch with a 250GB internal SSD.

I had always a certain amount of "other" storage which was strange to me some of this is related to Photoshop and Lightroom classic catalogue and generated previews etc but recently I have up to 180GB in this other storage which is causing problems when working with pictures etc. Unfortunately its not possible to really find out where all this comes from and I am not able to get rid of this. I have already researched online and checked manually suspective cache files etc this is nowhere close to adding up to 180GB. Also cleanmymac X is not able to clean this up.

Has anyone seen something similar and what can I do about this, I really need to reduce this other storage.

I would like to avoid to move my Lightroom catalogue to my external drive due to performance reasons and this catalogue is anyway only around 2GB.


Would appreciate any help and answers on this.

Regards,
Tom

 

[MacInWin]

If you have Time Machine enabled and the backup destination is not attached, TM will make snapshots every hour until the backup drive is attached. Could that be it?

 

[ferrarr]

If you have Time Machine enabled and the backup destination is not attached

It doesn't matter if the TM backup drive is connected or not. Even if it is connected local snapshots are still created and stored on the internal drive, as long as space is available.

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

Time Machine lets you restore files from local snapshots of the files on your Mac, even when your Time Machine backup disk isn't available.

support.apple.com

 

[pigoo3]

I had always a certain amount of "other" storage which was strange to me some of this is related to Photoshop and Lightroom classic catalogue and generated previews etc but recently I have up to 180GB in this other storage which is causing problems when working with pictures etc.

Has anyone seen something similar and what can I do about this, I really need to reduce this other storage.

This question gets asked quite a bit. "Other" storage is basically a catch-all area for items that don't necessarily fit in the other predefined categories (Apps, photos, movies, audio, backups).

Here's a screenshot of what my 256GB SSD looks like at the moment:



Notice that of the 154 GB's used on the SSD...146GB of them are in the "Other" category. Am I concerned?...nope. They're simply files that don't fit in the predefined categories.

If you want to dig into things a bit deeper...here's a MacWorld article that goes into great detail on the "Other" storage category:

How to delete Other storage on a Mac

Need more space on your Mac? Wondering what's taking up so much room? Want to delete Other? We have the answers! Plus why Apple no longer has Other in macOS Monterey.

www.macworld.co.uk

HTH,

Nick

 

[Tom75]

Thank you all for your comments, I will look into both things, snapshots and the article, hopefully I will be able to improve it.

Regards,
Tom