On Oct 30, 2019, at 3:16 PM, Tom_Kirshbaum wrote:
A month or so ago I noticed that System in Storage tab on ¡°About this Mac¡± was growing alarmingly.
This used to be a common occurrence. But yours is the first report I've heard of it in quite some time.
It is a very frustrating and scary problem when your hard drive quickly fills up for no apparent reason. Unfortunately it could be any of a number of things that has caused this. But it's normally not hard to track down what is causing the problem.
The most common cause of this sort of problem is that your OS is detecting a software error (which might be minor), and that error is being written to an error log over and over continuously, causing the log to balloon in size until your hard drive runs out of free space.
You can clear out the offending log by downloading:
ONYX (free)
and use it to clear out all of your log files using:
Maintenance --> Scripts
and/or
Cleaning --> Logs
See if that helps.
If it doesn't, other possibilities are that:
- Time Machine is creating backups on your main drive itself
- Dropbox (if you have it) is automatically syncing files to your computer
(Go to the Dropbox gear wheel which is at the bottom right of the Dropbox drop down menu. In the window that opens, choose Advanced. Next to the title Selective Sync:. click on Change Settings. Uncheck all the folders/files you do NOT want automatically synced to your computer. )
- Your laptop is creating and storing a huge "sleep image"
If none of the above help, see:
<>
for the mother of all suggestions on where your hard drive space may have gone.
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Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)
Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
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