Huge amount of System storage, can't find source

[flynnwinch]

Hi,

For the past couple of weeks, I've been noticing that my storage has been steadily decreasing. I don't install or download a huge amount of data, most of my storage is really just music and photos. I have a 1TB Sandisk Ultra II SSD, and I'm missing about ~250GB of storage. Here's the kicker - it doesn't appear to be anywhere.

Yesterday, I had about 223GB free. I deleted about 50GB of files I did not need anymore. The free storage space did not increase.
This morning, I booted my computer, and I found that I only had 213GB free (according to finder). I did not install any new programs or apps.

I checked several apps to try to find the source of this extra storage.

-System Information, which shows a lot of storage as "System". I Could not locate the source of this storage.

- Grand Perspective: 198GB free, 477GB used, 255GB miscellaneous on entire volume

- OmniDiskSweeper: 511.6GB used total on the entire volume

- I ran the command sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /, which shows a total usage of 477GB on entire volume

- Manually checked every parent folder inside /, /System/library/, /library, ~/, and ~/library including all hidden files and I could not find any abnormally large storage space used in any folder. I also checked EFI, but this did not have any significant storage used either.

- Double checked disk utility, there is no other partitions on this drive, I've used this exclusively for my hackintosh for over 2 years without any issues.

- Tried talking to Apple about where I could look or what I could try in order to track down the source of this storage, but I got the boot for not running on original hardware for this machine (despite owning many apple products).

I'm at a loss. I can't figure out where this storage is coming from. CCC's cloned drive is showing pretty much the same amount of free space as my main drive, so the storage has to be somewhere but I have no clue where. Any help would be really appreciated !

Edit: While writing this post, my free storage in system information decreased to 211.92GB. (Its actually constantly decreasing, now down to 211.44).

 

[UtterDisbelief]

1) Soft option - given your clear expertise I hesitate to mention it but have you looked into "sleep image" ?

2) Hard option - The only other event that causes this is an SSD coming to EOL. Although data held already is readable and secure, the amount of disk space that can be written to starts to decrease steadily until at total failure you have a readable but non-writable cache of data.

Just a couple of thoughts.

 

[flynnwinch]

Thanks for your response !

1. My sleep image file is only taking about 2gb of space, which is really insignificant. This space is also accounted for when I look through the space used on my mac.

2. I thought about the possibility of a failing SSD, however I have a hard time seeing this as being the root issue due to the fact that the total capacity of the drive is unchanged and that both macOS and CCC in the cloned drive are actually reporting the space as being used. I've had really good experience with Sandisk SSD's, and I won't rule this out as a possibility, but I feel that the issue is lying elsewhere. I know that Sandisk will send me a new SSD if I contact them though so I may just try swapping it regardless.

 

[flynnwinch]

Update:

Backing up with time machine shows the same amount of storage used, ~800GB. So there is definitely something using the storage on my mac, and it is not just a bad SSD as the information is being backed up.

 

[haurb900]

Did you ever find what this was from? I am just now noticing now that my system is using 317GB of space. Cloned disk is as well. I just updated to 10.14.6 Supplemental Update 2, wonder if it could be from a botched update? Everything is running smooth otherwise. I ran code to remove sleep image even though that seems to be outdated, just in case, and nothing changed.

 

[thedocbwarren]

Sounds like iCloud backup

 

[thedocbwarren]

If you are patient you can go to the cli and use:

du -h

Change to wherever you’d like to list the usage by directory for example go to root:

cd /
du -h

 

[haurb900]

Thanks much, I'll do some digging the next time I get the chance at the studio. I have a hunch that it may be a cloud backup program that has been sorely outdated for some time per this post I found:

Hi
I have recently reinstalled my CustomMac, so that I had fresh start with High Sierra.
The computer has been running fine over the weekend and was not turned off. Suddenly yesterday evening when I wanted to use it, the system was complaining about the disk being full.
I have a Samsung 840PRO 256GB and trim support is enabled with "sudo trimforce enable".
Looking at the systemdrive about 220GB are used by the system itself, which makes no sense, as nothing is really installed yet.
How can it suddenly use all the space?
My Late 2011 Macbook Pro, which uses a Samsung 850EVO and has "sudo trimforce enable" executed as well, does not have the same issue, so seems something with the CustoMac.

The specs of my CustoMac are these:
Intel Core i7 4770
16GB 1866MHz DDR3
Samsung 840PRO 256GB (macOS High Sierra 10.13.x)
OCZ Petrol 256GB (Windows 10)
Gigabyte GTX980Ti 6GB Gaming G1
Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H Motherboard

EDIT: Turns out that an installed application for syncing data, had for some reason synced files more than once and macOS treated these as system files

I've just been dragging my heels on getting a new one. Using CrashPlan, if anyone is interested. It doesn't seem to play nice on Mojave.

 

[flynnwinch]

Did you ever find what this was from? I am just now noticing now that my system is using 317GB of space. Cloned disk is as well. I just updated to 10.14.6 Supplemental Update 2, wonder if it could be from a botched update? Everything is running smooth otherwise. I ran code to remove sleep image even though that seems to be outdated, just in case, and nothing changed.

On my hackintosh, the issue ended up resolving itself after I upgraded to a new drive and started time machine backups on a new, empty drive.

I actually faced a similar problem on my MacBook Pro. It seemed to be linked to time machine backups. Deleting all local backups and disabling time machine solved the issue. I'm just not willing to try that on my hackintosh because I use it as a work machine (which can be risky at times) and I don't want to risk any data loss.

My MacBook Pro would actually be unable to complete backups because it had some pending backups that were stuck, which kept using up more storage over time. Running on macOS Catalina I'm currently still unable to perform time machine backups on that computer. Apple refused to provide service options (even software based) due to me running a beta os, so I'll try again in a few weeks when its released and more stable.

My take on this issue (at least in my case) seems to be that this may not be a hackintosh-related issue at all, but is in fact some problem with macOS.

If you find any alternative causes / other solutions I'd love to know. Could hopefully help me fix my MacBook Pro as well, as I don't have high hopes for Apple (and I have no useable backups of that computer).