Sequoia and system data

[macachia]

got a new basic MacBook Pro m3 18gb/512gb and was running the preinstalled macOS well and settled on 300gb free from the 494.4gb as registered after days of leaving it to settle any iCloud downloads etc.

Upon installing sequoia last week, my free space is down to 24gb. Mac hasn't been used for the better part but noticed the system data part in the storage settings page is not 339.43gb.

Any idea before I format the thing and try again? Many thanks

 

[macachia]

ever since posting 4 hours ago, free space is down to 14gb and system data ballooned up to 349.42gb.

I can't understand this

 

[gilby101]

My recommendation: Erase the disk and install macOs 14.5.

 

[Fishrrman]

Another "Fishrrman stupid question™":

Have you tried a full shutdown, and then a reboot?

 

[meta_merritt]

got a new basic MacBook Pro m3 18gb/512gb and was running the preinstalled macOS well and settled on 300gb free from the 494.4gb as registered after days of leaving it to settle any iCloud downloads etc.

Upon installing sequoia last week, my free space is down to 24gb. Mac hasn't been used for the better part but noticed the system data part in the storage settings page is not 339.43gb.

Any idea before I format the thing and try again? Many thanks

Going through the same crap, incredibly frustrating. I literally can't do anymore dev in Xcode and my progress has come to a screeching halt. I have an external 2TB hard drive, can I run time machine on that, wipe my hard drive, download macOS 14.5 Sonoma and re-store from Time Machine? Xcode 16 beta sucks too btw, don't download it.

 

[gilby101]

I have an external 2TB hard drive, can I run time machine on that, wipe my hard drive, download macOS 14.5 Sonoma and re-store from Time Machine?

Yes, but: If you backup with macOS 15 TM, I expect you will be able to open the backup in macOS 14.5 and to copy files/folder from it - hopefully macOS 15 hasn't made changes to APFS which prevent that (there is no guaranteed backward compatibility). I would not expect you to able to use Migration Assistant or to safely recovery data to ~/Library - because at least some of the layout and content will be incompatible.

It would be better to recover from a TM backup made with macOS 14.5, with which you can use Migration Assistant.

I literally can't do anymore dev in Xcode and my progress has come to a screeching halt

Hopefully you are realising that betas should only be installed on a secondary Mac on which you are prepared to lose everything.

 

[meta_merritt]

Yes, but: If you backup with macOS 15 TM, I expect you will be able to open the backup in macOS 14.5 and to copy files/folder from it - hopefully macOS 15 hasn't made changes to APFS which prevent that (there is no guaranteed backward compatibility). I would not expect you to able to use Migration Assistant or to safely recovery data to ~/Library - because at least some of the layout and content will be incompatible.

It would be better to recover from a TM backup made with macOS 14.5, with which you can use Migration Assistant.


Hopefully you are realising that betas should only be installed on a secondary Mac on which you are prepared to lose everything.

Should I wait until Apple drops a macOS 15 beta update to fix the issue? Literally trying to upload my visionOS app to App Store Connect via Xcode but Xcode is so bogged down it doesn't do anything.

 

[gilby101]

Should I wait until Apple drops a macOS 15 beta update to fix the issue

This Mac is important to you as a work machine (developing for visionOS), so go back to macOS 14.x and don't consider macOS 15 until September (or later). The exception would be if your development requires integration with macOS 15 - in that case use a different Mac for that purpose.

Reach out to other visionOS developers to see what they are doing.

 

[meta_merritt]

This Mac is important to you as a work machine (developing for visionOS), so go back to macOS 14.x and don't consider macOS 15 until September (or later). The exception would be if your development requires integration with macOS 15 - in that case use a different Mac for that purpose.

Reach out to other visionOS developers to see what they are doing.

Thanks! Nope, development does not require integration with macOS 15. Next question is, how do I clean/erase/wipe out my hard drive. MacBook Pro 16" M3

 

[Dave_O]

There is a bug in Sequoia's Spotlight process that can create huge index files at

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight

Is this the issue?

 

[meta_merritt]

Give everyone a little update on my end.......I ran a Time Machine backup on an external 2TB hard drive, erased everything on the hard drive and then used migration assistant to restore everything from Time Machine. Currently looking at my storage and everything looks normal....FOR NOW. System data is at 43GB.

OH....forgot to mention, you cannot downgrade to macOS Sonoma 14.5, system will not let you.

 

[macachia]

There is a bug in Sequoia's Spotlight process that can create huge index files at

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight

Is this the issue?

that's it, found massive 324gb file there TMP

 

[DerMario]

So, what can we do here? (Can't find the path by the way...)

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote of his problem in reply 12 above:
"that's it, found massive 324gb file there TMP"

A suggestion (one I've made numerous times):

TURN OFF Spotlight.
TURN IT OFF -- forever.

In terminal:
try
sudo mdutil -a -i off
or
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

And then...
Use SOMETHING ELSE with which to do searches when you need them.

I'd suggest TWO great, small, and FREE utilities:
EasyFind:

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

and
Find Any File:

Find Any File

findanyfile.app

 

[soulreaver99]

Ran into this is well. Pickup my Macbook Air base and noticed it was extremely hot when it was supposed to be sleeping for the past few hours. Thanks for the tip on spotlight!

 

[noblesoul117]

OP wrote of his problem in reply 12 above:
"that's it, found massive 324gb file there TMP"

A suggestion (one I've made numerous times):

TURN OFF Spotlight.
TURN IT OFF -- forever.

In terminal:
try
sudo mdutil -a -i off
or
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

And then...
Use SOMETHING ELSE with which to do searches when you need them.

I'd suggest TWO great, small, and FREE utilities:
EasyFind:

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

and
Find Any File:

Find Any File

findanyfile.app

What's your issue against Spotlight?

I won't be abandoning it, personally; however I am ditching Dropbox for a NAS, and have been concerned about losing DB's great search functionality which has been amazing for my needs (searching for text inside files, mainly). Spotlight seems to handle most of that fine, but I've been looking for additional utilities to fill any holes. I had already come across EasyFind, but Find Any File is a nice addition.

There's also ProFind, though I haven't tested it extensively.

 

[Fishrrman]

"What's your issue against Spotlight?"

I don't want stuff that runs in the background against my wishes, and creates ever-growing data files, again, against my wishes. And I didn't want all my stuff "indexed".

Also...
Some years ago, I was recording music using an iMac with a platter-based internal drive. When one is recording audio (video is even more critical), it requires pretty much "contiguous space" on the drive. ANYTHING going on in the background had the potential to disrupt the process. Such as spotlight.

So... spotlight was something I "disabled by default" on my Macs.
And has remained so, ever since. Even though the days of the HDD are pretty much gone now.

 

[Traace]

The Spotlight trick did not work for me. Before the upgrade, I had 700GB free, after the update only 60GB are left. The space is not used on my drive, there are also no snapshots. Don't know that is going on.

Edit: A reboot fixed it

 

[Ben J.]

Also...
Some years ago, I was recording music using an iMac with a platter-based internal drive. When one is recording audio (video is even more critical), it requires pretty much "contiguous space" on the drive. ANYTHING going on in the background had the potential to disrupt the process. Such as spotlight.

I remember that. Like 15 yrs ago, with old spinners with a typical read/write speed of 70MB/s. Avid Pro Tools, my main DAW for 25 yrs even advised disabling Spotlight, sleep and other stuff to let Protools run better.

We now have SSDs with r/w speeds of 1-2-3GB of data per second, and lightning fast busses and memory, and I've had no problem with the DAW performance on my macs for many years. Even with Spotlight on.

 

[soulreaver99]

Hoping B2 fixes this issue with spotlight!

 

[vbctv]

Hoping B2 fixes this issue with spotlight!

Not fixed in beta 2, I didn't have this issue in Beta 1 but I do in beta 2. But it's possible this is NOT a bug and has to do with AI readiness. I'm reading in other places that this may be Apple collecting the data for the AI launch because it needs lots of data. Right now my system data is at 225GB. I restarted and it went down to 145Gb but then slowly went back up to 225GB used. It doesn't seem to go above that and hasn't moved since. I'm gonna watch it and see if it goes back to normal in a few days, it may just be part of the re-indexing that spotlight does after an update and then will clear that cache back to the unused storage. Not really sure. But in activity monitor I don't see loads of data be written, but there is a lot being read by corespotlightd and according to DaisyDisk all the system data is located in hidden spotlight folders.

 

[soulreaver99]

Not fixed in beta 2, I didn't have this issue in Beta 1 but I do in beta 2. But it's possible this is NOT a bug and has to do with AI readiness. I'm reading in other places that this may be Apple collecting the data for the AI launch because it needs lots of data. Right now my system data is at 225GB. I restarted and it went down to 145Gb but then slowly went back up to 225GB used. It doesn't seem to go above that and hasn't moved since. I'm gonna watch it and see if it goes back to normal in a few days, it may just be part of the re-indexing that spotlight does after an update and then will clear that cache back to the unused storage. Not really sure. But in activity monitor I don't see loads of data be written, but there is a lot being read by corespotlightd and according to DaisyDisk all the system data is located in hidden spotlight folders.

It definitely took a toll on my base M2 with only 256GB of SSD. I remember at least 2 occasions when I picked it up from when it was supposedly sleeping (lid closed) and it was burning hot at the bottom and the battery was down to 5%. I didn't realize it was an indexing issue until I noticed nearly all my HD space was gone. This is a terrible way to grab data especially when it is unplugged and in sleep - can't be safe for the battery either.

 

[pbateman]

Same here, after beta 2 went downhill, my base macbook air is pretty much unusable took up the entire drive and it just locks up after a few min.

 

[igor9silva]

One tip for anyone desperate, just open a terminal and run while true; do killall -KILL corespotlightd; sleep 1; done. It'll keep running indefinitely to make sure Spotlight keeps closed (basically it closes anything named corespotlightd every 1 second).

I'll try disabling Spotlight entirely with sudo mdutil -a -i off now as suggested above.

 

[igor9silva]

Update: I have NOT disabled Spotlight and the problem seems gone. System data is starting to lower (currently @ 215GB from >300).

My theory is that spotlight is trying to index a bunch of new stuff (likely related to the Semantic Index announced with Apple Intelligence), and it's causing storage to overload and crash.