Upgrading from El Capitan to Mojave - 25GB disappeared.

[krs]

I upgraded my 2012 Mini a few days ago - from El Capitan, 10.11.6 to Mojave, 10.14.6

Things seem to be going well, but I just noticed that I somehow ended up with rought 25GB of additional free space on my hard drive.

Free space on internal 500GB original spinner drive is 66.28GB (on El Capitan)
Free space on external 500GB SSD is 91.19GB (on Mojave)

Is that anything to be concerned about?
Or was the extra 25GB on the spinner drive just useless trash that Migration assistant ignored?

Anyone else has that type of experience when migrating?

Get Info - left spinner, right SSD

 

[ferrarr]

What does it show when in Disk Utility? Also, are you booting from the internal AND external, when you did the Get Info, in those images? Or were you only booted from then internal/external and did the Get Info?

 

[krs]

The GetInfo images I posted were taken while booted into Mojave.

I was initially going to boot back into El Capitan for the GetInfo for the spinner drive, but then thought - why bother, the information should be the same.
And I have booted back and forth into El Capitanon the spinner and Mojave on the SSD more times in the last three days than in the last six years running El Capitan

I'm in Mojave right now and when I check Disk Utility I get the exact same numbers.
If the difference was only a few GB I wouldn't think about it too much, but around 25GB sounds like an awful lot.

 

[ferrarr]

What about the folders you have excluded from Time machine, if any?

Obviously, you would have to check El Captain for that info.

 

[krs]

I don't use time machine.

What I did:
1. Install Mojave on a new 500GB external SSD I had just bought, connected to the Mini via USB 3.0
2. After Mojave was installed, used Migration Assistant to move everything from the Mini internal 500GB spinner drive to the external with Mojave. That took close to 5 hours (over night)
3. Booted into Mojave on the external by holding down the option key and using the Mini that way.

Desktop in Mojave looks the same as on El Capitan on the spinner.
Only problem app identified during the migration was Gutenprint (which I didn't even know I had - certainly not something I use)
The only other difference I noticed so far was that Grab was replaced by Screenshot. I subsequently transferred Grab from El Capitan to Mojave.
And the only difference I would expect in the used/free space on the hard drives would be the difference in the size of the two macOSs, Mojave vs El Capitan - that sure wouldn't account for 25GB

 

[chscag]

@krs:

When I first saw your title to this thread, it appeared to me that you lost 25GB in the upgrade. However, you're saying you gained 25GB instead. Perhaps you may want to change the title?

 

[krs]

@chscag - I was debating how to phrase the title when I first posted.

I decided against using the terminology you're suggesting because I thought "Gaining 25GB" sounds positive.
As far as I'm concerned, right now that extra 25GB on the SSD is a 'negative' until I understand what actually happened and I didn't loose a chunk of data during migration.

I don't recall ever seeing anyone post that they picked up a fairly big chunk of additional hard drive space by upgrading macOS.
I remember SnowLeopard was quite an improvement over the previous versions, ran faster and cleaner, but SL was mostly a clean up app - that doesn't seem to be the case with Mojave.

I had hoped that perhaps someone on the forum hada similar experience upgrading to Mojave.
Next step may be to compare the size of the major folders in Mojave and El Cap to see if anything stands out.

 

[ferrarr]

You are going to have to manually compare folders across both drives. Start with Applications, Library, System, and Users. If there is no difference in any of them, then it would be a hidden file/folder.

 

[chscag]

I decided against using the terminology you're suggesting because I thought "Gaining 25GB" sounds positive.
As far as I'm concerned, right now that extra 25GB on the SSD is a 'negative' until I understand what actually happened and I didn't loose a chunk of data during migration.

No problem. I wasn't sure that you meant to say what you said. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[pm-r]

Things seem to be going well, but I just noticed that I somehow ended up with rought 25GB of additional free space on my hard drive.

Free space on internal 500GB original spinner drive is 66.28GB (on El Capitan)
Free space on external 500GB SSD is 91.19GB (on Mojave)

How did you clone or migrate your data and what applications did you use???


Don't forget that some SSD manufacturers add a substantial amount of additional SPARE storage chips to replace any dead or dying storage cells that are made invisible to the user.

I'm just wondering if that could have confused the Get Info space counter or some such thing???

Just letting the old brain wander and monitor the situation with some possible reasoning here...





- Patrick
======

 

[krs]

How did you clone or migrate your data and what applications did you use???

I explained that in post #5 - I just used Migration Assistant to transfer the data from the 10.11.6 internal spinner to the 10.14.6 external SSD.

Don't forget that some SSD manufacturers add a substantial amount of additional SPARE storage chips to replace any dead or dying storage cells that are made invisible to the user.

I'm just wondering if that could have confused the Get Info space counter or some such thing???

I doubt it - SSDs have been around for too long a time for that to be an issue.

I started to look at the size of the individual folders and comparing them.

Most are dead on - ie same size in Mojave and El Cap.
The system folder in Mojave is about 3GB larger than El Cap which is understandable - but that is going in the wrong direction anyway.
The biggest differenceright now is in the user library and the mail folder - on El Cap I had a V2 and V3 sub-folder under mail, on Mojave it's a V2 and a V6. But the big difference is that the library mail folder in Mojave is about 7GB smaller than the library mail folder in El Cap.
I wonder if that is just due to better compression/storage or if I'm actually loosing messages.
I need to boot back into ElCap to see if there is a difference in the message count.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

@chscag - I was debating how to phrase the title when I first posted.

I decided against using the terminology you're suggesting because I thought "Gaining 25GB" sounds positive.
As far as I'm concerned, right now that extra 25GB on the SSD is a 'negative' until I understand what actually happened and I didn't loose a chunk of data during migration.
...

When you upgrade to a newer version of the Mac OS, after the upgrade has been completed, the original installer program (which is quite big) that resided in your Applications folder is automatically deleted.

 

[krs]

When you upgrade to a newer version of the Mac OS, after the upgrade has been completed, the original installer program (which is quite big) that resided in your Applications folder is automatically deleted.

Yes, but.....

I installed from a USB Mojave installer Flash Drive
and
The Application folder size in El Capitan and Mojave are the same
and
I just checked, the Mojave installer at 6.03GB is still in the Application folder on the SSD (running Mojave)

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Yes, but.....

Okay, so we still need to find what's different.

One or more of these free utilities will help
you find out what is and is not present:

DiskInventory X (free)
Disk Inventory X

or

GrandPerspective (free)
GrandPerspective

or

OmniDiskSweeper (free)
OmniDiskSweeper, OmniWeb, and OmniPresence - The Omni Group

 

[pm-r]

Okay, so we still need to find what's different.

I'm just wondering if any of the suggestions helped???




- Patrick
======

 

[krs]

I'm just wondering if any of the suggestions helped???

I don't know yet.

Sometimes the notification emails from Mac Forums come in so late that they are off the bottom of the screen by the time they show in my inbox and I miss them.
I'll try the apps Randy posted, but I know already that the user_library_mail folder is 7GB smaller on Mojave (as I posted above) - I just don't know if that means not all emails were migrated or Mojave just has a more efficient way to store them.

 

[krs]

I tried Disk Inventory X, but that didn't help much.

To start with that add gives results that I don't even understand
Like a size of 3,40.7 for the size of the Seagate drive (the Mojave OS and all Data)
Or the user folder on that drive with a size of 2,56.7GB

But in general it doesn't provide any more info than what I can get from the Mini via the macOS.

 

[ferrarr]

It does seem like the biggest discrepancy is in the Users folder.

 

[pm-r]

I tried Disk Inventory X, but that didn't help much.

I wonder if this DirEqual.app could help a bit more...???

DirEqual - quickly compare Mac folders.




- Patrick
======

 

[krs]

It does seem like the biggest discrepancy is in the Users folder.

Yes, but what does a size of 2,56.7GB on the Mojave drive vs 2,94.6GB on El Capitan even mean?

When I went through the sub-folders of the Users folder, the big discrepancy of about 7GB was the users_library_mail folder.

I have to boot back into El Cap to do a message count of the various mail folders, and I have a lot of them.
Could be that Apple Mail in Mojave has a more efficient way to store messages or their attachments to explain the difference.

Not sure I want to spend too much more time on this - I'll keep the old spinner internal as a back up in case I find out later that some data is missing, but right now everything looks fine.