Other Users & Shared taking up 318GB on my internal drive!

Question

Other Users & Shared taking up 318GB on my internal drive!

Other Users & Shared taking up 318GB!

We are two users on a practically new Mac mini M2.

Total file size of Applications, Library, System and users folders is 160 GB.

There is a shared folder in users but is is 600 KB

I have no idea how the whole drive is full.

I have used the following command to clean up Time Machine backups :

sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 9999999999 1

Even grand perspective shows some large unused space on the drive.

Mini M2 Pro Mac OS Tahoe 26.1

Mac mini (M2 Pro, 2023)

Posted on Dec 19, 2025 7:15 PM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

56,326 points

Dec 19, 2025 7:51 PM in response to David Pelletier-Burns

Apple’s Storage display tries to group data by category, and usually fails. Most people have a large, unexplained value for “System Data”. This is the first time I’ve seen a problem with “Other users & shared”.

The most likely explanation is 3rd party software that creates its own user. This is common for traditional Unix software, but rare for macOS. The only Mac app that I know that does this is the PostgreSQL database server.

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Answer 2

TheLittles

Level 10

203,037 points

Dec 19, 2025 8:13 PM in response to David Pelletier-Burns

"Other Users & Shared taking up 318GB on my internal drive!: [...]Other Users & Shared taking up 318GB![...]"

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Thanks for the screenshot.

Unkown Space Taken Up:

I'm seeing 6 volumes. So, it's as if it is partitioned, into separate volume. So, you might be able to delete them --but, do that and its all gone. Is Boot Camp used here.

Go Here: Add, delete, or erase APFS volumes in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
Scroll to: Erase an APFS volume
As it Rads: When you erase a volume, all the data on the volume is permanently erased, and the empty volume remains in the container.

View Disk Utility in Recovery Mode:

So, booting into Recovery Mode, and then clicking Disk Utility, does it look any different?

Screenshot of Top-Right Corner on Second Image:

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