Issue with the storage calculation on my MacBook Air M1

Returning to this...after some experimentation, I found that (in my case) by enabling Apple Intelligence, the endless "Calculating" of System Data cleared right up and displayed the correct value after a minute or so. Afterwards, turning Apple Intelligence back OFF and rebooting results in the same endless "Calculating" of System Data again.

Since Apple Intelligence was released, I have had it turned OFF since I don't want it enabled on my system. Seems as if having it turned OFF caused this issue on my system (I can't speak for others).

HWTech wrote:

I believe that information is based on the Spotlight Index. You can try rebuilding Spotlight:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

I've had this issue for quite a while now ("System Data" stuck on "Calculating") so I'll try this to see if it resolves the issue & report back with my findings.

I believe that information is based on the Spotlight Index. You can try rebuilding Spotlight:

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

I and others have seen this burg as well with no real reason why. I finally just erased and reinstalled the OS then all was fine.

Same endless "Calculating" of "System Data" (no other sections are affected) after rebuilding the Spotlight index. My drive has only ~26.5GB used out of the ~494GB (512GB) total so indexing didn't take long (monitored when it stopped by using Activity Monitor). Afterwards, I shut down, then restarted the Mac. It's really not an issue to me (it's been this way for as long as I can remember with no ill-effects) but thought I'd try this suggestion out.

I'm not about to reinstall the OS to get of it.

Had this happening on one of my Macs running Sequoia, but not the other. When I upgraded the affected Mac to Tahoe, it started reporting a value for System Data (it's still the last one on the list to populate, but it's fast).