Macintosh HD Data Other Storage Full

Hi tutneytater,

We'd like to help you find the best resolution for your storage. The best starting steps will be the article for Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support which covers what to check and how to check and resolve some steps in freeing up the storage. With Other storage, this can also relate to files that may have not met a specific category for the break down and cache data from apps and web browser. If you continue to have storage issues after what we shared, you'll want to reach out to Apple Support

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Here is some info on that "other" (now called "system") data category:

See used and available storage space on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

The important part: you cannot manage that category; the OS does and it will change dynamically. i've read posts here that said reinstalling the OS helped.

Thanks for getting back with us about this, tutneytater.

Let's see if we can find the folders that might not be readily visible but contain large amounts of data, so you can decide how to address those. Please follow these steps:

1. Open the Storage Management Window (About This Mac > Storage > Manage).
2. Select "Recommendations" in the sidebar.
3. In the "Reduce Clutter" section click on the "Review Files" button. 
4. Select the "File Browser" tab located across the top of the window.
5. Click on any folder listed in the left most column to highlight it.
6. Press the keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-. (period) to show hidden files including the Library folder.

From there, you can review the files and folders to see if you can spot any outliers. Please let us know how this goes and we can continue investigating with you. Take care.

Unfortunately, you will not find that category, which is now called system data. In any case,you cannot control it as it,explains in the article I linked to. Two things can help: a restart or deleting snapshots if there are any. The amount will change dynamically; a restart on mine reduced the total amount from about 45 to 21.

The 'Other' storage on a Mac consists of different types of files that don't fall into any particular storage category (like videos, photos, music, apps, or mail). The ‘Other’ category also includes junk files and personal files such as .pdf, .psd, .doc, browser caches, voice files, message media files stored locally, system caches, archive files like .zip and .dmg disk images, fonts, extensions, app plugins, etc. Other storage spaces on Mac is something to be taken care of since an increased 'Other' storage reduces the available free spaces on the Mac hard drive.

Further, I suggest you to check the below link that will take you through the methods to clear the 'other' storage on your Mac:

https://mackeeper.com/blog/what-is-other-on-mac-storage-and-how-to-clean-it/

Hope it helps!

It does not matter much what you do - Apple created and coded it and tells you that you cannot control it, You may be able to get rid of a few GB, but that is not "controlling" it. Additionally, a lot of the files in the other category are in the read only volume of the OS which means no one (including MacKeeper) and do anything there except read.

And I would certainly not trust anything at all from that company - and that includes never installing it on any of my devices.

Yes, you can do that; but it will happen again (and again). So you will need to erase/reinstall every time. I did not suggest it because I find it too much wasted time unless there is a huge accumulation in that category. And, it changes dynamically, so it may be much less next time you check after restarting.

Hi tutneytater,

To reduce the amount of storage taken up by "Other", please see this user tip: What is “Other” storage on a Mac, and how… - Apple Community

You're welcome and good luck. Remember if/when you get a new one: 120 GB hard drives are really inadequate - for myself, 512 GB is a minimum nowadays.