Help! Mojave 'System' is 700GB and growing. Can't empty Trash [Resolved Sort of]

[mikehalloran]

Wait, there's more!

Here are some screen shots that explain a bit more how SSDs work.

I assume we all know that, with Native Access, you can select a target drive, right? However, NA downloads the VI to your System drive first, runs the installer placing it on your target drive then purges the installer. All well and good… but TRIM & GC still have to prepare those cells for new data. You will see this in the before (1.18) and after (1.08) screen shots for Macintosh HD below. In a day or so, this will go back to 1.18 or more as I took the shot after I started running the updaters. .1TB is about 100GB.

I did this just for the example. Using NA, I reinstalled over 200GB of NI libraries. Again, unlike an HHD, data does not overwrite till TRIM & GC prepare the cells—new data is written elsewhere. In the screen shot for my 870 QVO drive, you'll see 208.67 purgeable. When T/GC are done purging the cells, this space will once again be available.

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[mikehalloran]

One last thing:

I highly recommend keeping your Downloads Folder empty. Once you've downloaded something, put it where it belongs or Trash it. Not only is this good housekeeping but it serves another very useful purpose.

In addition to reinstalling a few NI Libraries, I also ran some iZotope upgrades. In the first screen shot of my Downloads, you'll see three NI files and three iZotope files.

NA clears the NI installers when done; iZotope leaves the installers in the folder (second screen shot) and they must be cleared manually. Keeping the Downloads Folder normally empty allows me to keep an eye on this.

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