#1
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OT: Mac Maintenance
Hoping some of the more tech savvy (that's pretty much everyone) than I can help. Have a iMac with over 460 GB of system data. Done some searching for ways to clean up, and have managed to delete about 4GB picking files here and there. I gather there are a number of software providers out there who sell products to more efficiently clean this up. I have read that the 'proper' amount of System Data is 15-20GB...I'm clearly drowning in the stuff. Can anyone recommend a good solution for me?? HELP
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#2
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Quote:
Are you actually running out of disk space? MacOS should manage most of this class of data reasonably well. |
#3
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Or Mac Mail while caching mailboxes locally? iOS backups and Mac Mail are stored as System Data IIRC.
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#5
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When my old machine was getting slow this software worked well:
https://macpaw.com/ |
#6
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The newer MacOS versions load up system data. It is not iOS backups or local mail cashes. It’s a big mystery. As you store files on the Hard drive the OS should reduce the System Data file. It’s a Royal pain in the arse. Not sure if it’s a purpose built thing to help nudge users to pay for apples cloud based storage. Thats my cynical idea.
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Cheers...Daryl Life is too important to be taken seriously |
#7
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MacOS has its own disk space cleanup tool - open 'Disk utility' and poke around.
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#8
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If you're running a recent-ish version of macOS (macOS 13 or 14) you can easily see a report of disk usage by going to System Settings > General and then selecting Storage in the right side of the pane. It'll take a few moments to generate the report but will give you a nice rundown of what's being used where.
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#9
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Another Cleanmymac user here. The hard drive on my laptop has over 450 gigs open. I store in multiple places. I do have a Time Machine and also stop on two external hard drives and also have Google and Apple cloud storage. I don’t want to loose all the family photos I have. Over the top? A bit.
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A bad day on the bike is better than a good day at work! Last edited by JMT3; 03-19-2024 at 06:19 AM. |
#10
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Quote:
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#11
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This is a very useful tool for visualizing file sizes/data usage.
https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net |
#12
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I used to muck around the bowels of operating systems...nowadays, I just wipe the drive and reinstall from backup (I think there's a special mode or boot sequence on the Mac that does the wiping for you)...
How old is this iMac? |
#13
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Good question. Does it have Apple silicon or older Intel machine? SSD or not?
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#14
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This visualization tool has helped me track down disk hogs:
https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ |
#15
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Use a visualization tool. OSX doesn't really have issues with randomly chewing disk space up.
If it's happening, it's application software you installed leaving stuff around. My achilles heel is docker (containerization software). That stupid thing can chew 100GB/month on my work Mac. Easy to clean up, but I'll forget and it will eat up disk till it messes my work up. |
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