trying to manage my hard drive storage, almost out of 1TB

I'm trying to understand what the 'other (237.62GB)' is, in my storage. I can't access it to see what is stored there.


I'm almost out of 1tb storage, have 'one drive' and everything is backed up to there (except photos as that isn't an easy click). Have files 'on demand' on and entire hard drive backed up to external storage device.


If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. thanks




iMac 27″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Aug 30, 2025 9:14 PM

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Posted on Sep 10, 2025 2:55 PM

thanks everyone for your help, much appreciated.


yesterday I was down to 3GB free on the drive. I also noticed that when logged in as 'other user' the one drive was constantly backing up non stop. I noticed it was one link that was constantly being backed up - link to a shared one drive. I deleted the link, went to bin. the link was backed up 260,000 times since march. that's not an error. at 1.3mb per link that freed up 360GB. :-)


so my 10yr old machine, has stoped overheating from the constant back up, stopped glitching was the waste of SDD using up the space for the back up and i got 360GB back.


thanks again.

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Sep 10, 2025 2:55 PM in response to Camelot

thanks everyone for your help, much appreciated.


yesterday I was down to 3GB free on the drive. I also noticed that when logged in as 'other user' the one drive was constantly backing up non stop. I noticed it was one link that was constantly being backed up - link to a shared one drive. I deleted the link, went to bin. the link was backed up 260,000 times since march. that's not an error. at 1.3mb per link that freed up 360GB. :-)


so my 10yr old machine, has stoped overheating from the constant back up, stopped glitching was the waste of SDD using up the space for the back up and i got 360GB back.


thanks again.

Sep 2, 2025 11:51 AM in response to ifas74

Other is data used by the system that's outside of your direct control.


It typically includes caches, temporary files, virtual memory backing, filesystem snapshots, etc. - not something a typical user would interact with directly. Instead, the OS manages this, deleting old content as necessary if space is needed.


You may see the 'Other...' decrease after a reboot, since many files are flushed at shutdown, and you're not likely to be eating much in the way of virtual memory with no apps open, but it will grow over time.


Suffice to say, the OS manages this, and 'right-sizes' it based on your usage. You don't have any control over it.


The most obvious saving available to you is to turn on iCloud Photos, which will offload much of the 200GB of photos data on your system (assuming you have sufficient iCloud storage space).

You could also do the same with your Documents, although that tends to have more implications to your workflow. Without knowing what you do, and how many of those 178GB of documents you need right now, it's hard to tell if that's practical for you.


At the end of the day, 1TB isn't much nowadays and it might be worth looking into additional storage options.

Sep 3, 2025 11:58 AM in response to ifas74

> Photos aren't backed up to one drive as I don't know of the way to do this?


I don't either. I don't use OneDrive.


Photos.app is directly integrated with Apple's iCloud storage (check System Settings -> iCloud -> Storage to enable), where it uploads your photo library to iCloud without having to worry about things at the file system level. I don't think there's a similar option with OneDrive (which would require copying your entire Photos Library to OneDrive, but would still leave the full library intact on your system for no net saving).


> I have set one drive preferences for 'files on demand' is there a way to say set this to only have documents dowloaded that were used in the last, say, week?


Again, that's a OneDrive thing. I'm not familiar with the options there.


> Oh is a reboot, turn off turn on? or more than that?


Not just 'turn off'. That's rarely a good idea (and usually a last resort). Instead, use the Apple menu -> Restart (or Shut Down).

Sep 2, 2025 4:08 PM in response to Camelot

Thanks Camelot, this is very helpful.

I use an external drive to back up the mac hard drive. I also use one drive to back up files. Photos aren't backed up to one drive as I don't know of the way to do this? The documents is a good point, I have set one drive preferences for 'files on demand' is there a way to say set this to only have documents dowloaded that were used in the last, say, week? It looks to me that documents not used for months are still on the hard drive


Oh is a reboot, turn off turn on? or more than that?


Thanks!

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trying to manage my hard drive storage, almost out of 1TB

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