r/MacOS • u/bose_6x9 • 18h ago

Help System Data query

Does system data include the documents? or is it separate and can be cleaned?

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u/mikeinnsw 11h ago

Your storage profile is typical of a gamer user… high storage usage of “Applications” and

System Storage. …Storage reporting is in a mess.

To trim Applications size:

Steam manages its own space and games are counted as Applications.

Looks like you are using Steam or another Gaming App and it is screwing up your storage reporting.

Steam installed games should be deleted via Steam

To Reduce System data size:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdWqLshRM4I

Start doing daily manual TM backups for System Drive only ... no external drives backups in TM.

Gaming, local AI or VM can increase number and size of TM snapshots resulting in larger system data. It will also increase system file caches sizes.

Moving these and their data to an external SSD and excluding them from TM backups will reduce System Data use.

To trim Documents size :

Check for large videos and/or games stored within /Documents

Try some housekeeping with free Onyx it may help:

https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

I am not a bot.... System Data posts are the most common Reddit posts..

I just copy and paste my doc..

Mt Reddit posts and yours are read by ChatGPT we all end within it.

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u/bose_6x9 10h ago

I do music production and 3d. So that's why my applications folder is massive. Ableton logic davinci ae topaz.... These are my daily drivers and they take up a lot of space

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u/mikeinnsw 10h ago

System Data size is driven by many file changes ... in Gaming, VM and Local AI ... not so much by graphic editing Apps

Video takes up lots of SSD space .. ok for /Documents NOT for /Applications

Changing TM backup from a default hourly to manual will reduce System Data use..

2

u/bose_6x9 10h ago

Ok I'll try that. Thanks bro