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I have a 512GB SSD in my Mac. When cleanly installed from a TimeMachine backup, it shows as being about 120GB. Over time, the disk usage steadily increases. Today About My Mac Storage shows just 44GB free and 403GB of "System".

I've read through all the related questions and (I think) tried everything, but given low level Un*x tools show nothing, and none of the solutions I've read worked (including flushing Time Machine snapshots. None have worked.

Here's the weird thing: df shows me 94% full, but du says 118GB used. Where is the rest?

I've cleaned out TimeMachine snapshots using tmutil, all the disk utilities like OmniDiskSweeper confirm the 118GB of actual files.

Creating a CarbonCopyCloner image on another disk is 118GB as indicated by du, so apparently somehow APFS thinks there is an additional huge chunk of space used.

(base) Mnementh:private alastair$ sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /
1   /home
1   /EFI-Backups
1   /usr
1   /.Spotlight-V100
1   /net
0   /.PKInstallSandboxManager-SystemSoftware
1   /bin
1   /sbin
du: /Library/Application Support/Cylance/Desktop/q: Permission denied
40  /Library
0   /.Trashes
6   /System
1   /.fseventsd
4   /private
1   /.DocumentRevisions-V100
0   /.vol
23  /Users
45  /Applications
1   /opt
1   /dev
1   /Volumes
0   /.TemporaryItems
118 /
118 total

(base) Mnementh:private alastair$ df
Filesystem     512-blocks       Used   Available Capacity  iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on
**/dev/disk2s1    999805536  930152088    66129504    94%  2216997 9223372036852558810    0%   /**
devfs                 693        693           0   100%     1200                   0  100%   /dev
/dev/disk2s4    999805536    2099232    66129504     4%        1 9223372036854775806    0%   /private/var/vm
/dev/disk0s4    934512880  312083512   622429368    34%   459251          4294508044    0%   /Volumes/Windows
map -hosts              0          0           0   100%        0                   0  100%   /net
map auto_home           0          0           0   100%        0                   0  100%   /home
/dev/disk4s2   7813390288 5615807616  2197582672    72% 10158039          4284809240    0%   /Volumes/Thyme Machine
/dev/disk3s2  15627315120 3533581776 12093733344    23%   207942          4294759337    0%   /Volumes/8TB USB
/dev/disk4s3   7813128160 2320179456  5492948704    30%   134145          4294833134    0%   /Volumes/Media HD
/dev/disk5          49896      39432       10464    80%      328          4294966951    0%   /Volumes/OmniDiskSweeper

Where is all the rest?

Alastair Thomson
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  • Please list the things you've tried (the more specific the better) and how they failed. Without further detail on this we have no way of knowing whether you just made a typo, got something wrong to apply a specific answer to your setup, or whether really all the things you've tried didn't work. If you relied on information from other answers on this site please also add links. – nohillside Aug 06 '19 at 18:44
  • I've run CleanMyMac, OmniDiskSweeper and command line to look for large files/folders. I've flushed the Time Machine backups (and saw them removed but only gained about 2GB of space). I've also created a clone of the filesystem using CarbonCopyCloner - and only see 120GB copied and it's complete (and bootable). I'm a long time Un*x admin and developer and so very familiar with all the commands but have been complete in searching the forums for suggestions. As you can see from the above du and df provide what seem to be weirdly different results. I've never seen anything like this/ – Alastair Thomson Aug 08 '19 at 13:48
  • What's in /Library/Application Support/Cylance/Desktop/q? – nohillside Aug 08 '19 at 14:05
  • It's the quarantine directory for CylancePROTECT - ACLs prevent it being scanned, but there's nothing in there. – Alastair Thomson Aug 09 '19 at 12:47
  • So, things were completely unusable so I bit the bullet, backed up using Carbon Copy Cloner to a new disk, reformatted and restored. 132GB used... What the heck is taking up space that just doesn't seem to exist? – Alastair Thomson Aug 09 '19 at 19:56

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