Storage Fluctuations In User Home Folder

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Storage Fluctuations In User Home Folder

I seem to have stumbled upon a strange issue and wasn’t sure if it was cause for alarm.

The storage value for my home folder on my 2019 MacBook Pro (SSD) seems to be constantly fluctuating in size. I have a video of the issue which is hosted here:

As you can see in the video, there is also a huge differential between the size of the user folder on my most recent Time Machine backup and the folder on my actual SSD. Could this possibly be a SSD issue or is it likely just a bug in macOS. It is not just the user folder either. There are also differentials in some of the other folders TM backs up like Library and System, These differentials are smaller but still present.

I am running Big Sur.

Any insight or help in understanding and/or resolving this issue is greatly appreciated.

[Link Edited by Moderator]

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on Dec 3, 2021 8:49 AM

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Answer 1

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leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

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188,532 points

Dec 3, 2021 10:44 AM in response to ITLover88

ITLover88 wrote:

I seem to have stumbled upon a strange issue and wasn’t sure if it was cause for alarm.

The storage value for my home folder on my 2019 MacBook Pro (SSD) seems to be constantly fluctuating in size. I have a video of the issue which is hosted here:

As you can see in the video, there is also a huge differential between the size of the user folder on my most recent Time Machine backup and the folder on my actual SSD. Could this possibly be a SSD issue or is it likely just a bug in macOS. It is not just the user folder either. There are also differentials in some of the other folders TM backs up like Library and System, These differentials are smaller but still present.

I am running Big Sur.

Any insight or help in understanding and/or resolving this issue is greatly appreciated.

[Link Edited by Moderator]

And how is this causing you issues...?

Local snaps take advantage of local storage the more available the more it uses

About Time Machine local snapshots - Apple Support

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Answer 2

ITLover88 Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 3, 2021 7:02 PM in response to leroydouglas

I’m wasn’t sure if the fluctuating size of the home folder (it fluctuates in size in the following location and the item count fluctuates) it is not causing me any measurable issue at the moment but I wanted to make sure this was not an early indicator of an underlying issue.

As for time machine would the local snaps account for the huge differential in space considering the user folder on the actual machine is almost 5x the size of the same folder on the time machine backup as seen below. I wasn’t sure if that was normal or if that was an excessive amount of differential between the two.

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Storage Fluctuations In User Home Folder

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