Huge macOs 10.14 System Folder Size Difference Between Finder and About This Mac/Storage

I am puzzled by the discrepancy between the amount of space left on my system drive and the space taken by each folder as displayed by the Finder.

Let me explain: my system disk is a 480 GB SSD (479.89 GB to be exact.) Under Finder it shows 130.39 GB available. If I add all the content sizes (Users Folder size + Application Folder Size + Library, etc.) it all adds up to 242.61 GB.

242.61 GB minus 480 GB, I should have 237.39 GB of space left and available. But I only have 130.39 GB. That's 107 GB of space missing. What the heck?

Examining the About this Mac/ Storage shows an even more puzzling story:

Here the System takes a whooping 173.5 GB of space!! On the Finder screenshot above, the System folder is a meager 10.12 GB. That's a 163 GB difference!! What gives Apple???

I searched the internet for an answer, and stumbled upon this post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8084507

In there a reader suggested to look for Time Machine local snapshots - invisible files that can take a lot of space on the system drive. Only.... I do not use Time Machine. Nethertheless I was curious, maybe I turned it on at some point and forgot about it, I wanted to be sure and entered the command "sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /" in Terminal. And I got this result:

Ah ah! I do have local snapshots, only they are not generated by Time Machine but by Carbon Copy Cloner, a (great) Bombich software.

Lo and behold, there is such a feature in the software since the introduction of macOs High Sierra and APFS- formatted volumes, and in my case... snapshots is turned on! Ah ah! We're getting somewhere.

Snapshots in CCC Preferences, is enabled.

And looking at my system drive in CCC I can indeed see the nine snapshots, with one that's 39 GB. All right, that's a start. But it's only a portion of the 107 GB not accounted for.

Hmmm. Since these snapshots are old from last year, at this point I will experiment and just delete them to see what happen. I should get back at least 39 GB, then we'll see where the rest is hiding.

So I selected the snapshots and deleted them all. CCC went on a re-reading of the volume and...

 Bingo! I now have 246 GB of free space! CCC snapshots were taking all these 107 GB of unavailable space, much more than the apparent 39 GB something.

Back to normal!

All right, so if you do have a discrepancy between the available space on your system drive and the space occupied by the system and your user files, chances are snapshots have been created by Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, or another backup app.

You might want to keep them, or you might want to delete them to free the space for other files. I wish Apple would list them properly in the About this Mac/ Storage as SNAPSHOTS! Is that too much to ask?

Adobe Encore CS6 still works on macOS 10.14 Mojave

Event though DVD Studio Pro is deprecated, Adobe Encore CS6 is still kicking on Mojave and with it the ability to author (relatively simple) DVD and Blu-ray Discs.

Check this previous post for how to download Encore CS6. You cannot install Adobe Media Encoder CS6 anymore though, so you are loosing the ability to encode Dolby AC3 audio with Adobe. Fortunately for us Mac users, we have Compressor for that!

And by the way DVD Player is still there on Mojave, only buried under: System/Library/CoreServices/Applications.

Apple macOS 10.14 Mojave is up and running!

Mojave is now running on cMP 5,1 Intel 6 core 3.46GHz, Radeon 7950 (Metal compatible), 32GB RAM. It needed a firmware update prior to install.

After that was done, Mojave installed just fine. I made sure to disconnect all RAID and single media drives just in case. 

Done installing.

Firmware has been updated to Boot ROM Version 138.0.0.0.0

Only thing not working is Airdrop sharing. Apparently cMP 2012 are not compatible. 

AirDrop system requirements

To share between a Mac and an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you need any of these devices and operating systems:

• Mac from 2012 or later (excluding the mid-2012 Mac Pro) using OS X Yosemite or later 

That's a real drag Apple!

Working on a short and small multicam project in FCPX 10.4.3 with 4K footage in a 1080p Timeline. I'm letting FCPX transcode the XAVC Long GOP and h264 originals to ProRes422.

Slowly working with the originals until all the transcoding is finished in the background. I can perform basic editing in Multicam mode without much problem although it is pretty sluggish each time I stop/play or try to scrub.

After transcode and waveform generation is completed, everything is very responsive. Moving quickly through the first cut. No weird behavior, no hangs to report.

Exporting a h264 one pass TC screener via Send To Compressor was at first about real time: 15min. Timeline compressed in 15min. After the second and third export for screener 2 and 3 the time went down to 8-7min so half real time. Not too bad.

Just tried a few BruceX exports and got 44sec. Not great, not too disgusting either.

Apple's macOS Mojave 10.14 is Upon Us! How to make a bootable USB installer

Apple just released macOS 10.14 Mojave!

As Always: BACKUP EVERYTHING and DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEM OR APPS IN THE MIDDLE OF A PROJECT.

Mojave is brand new, and even though it is stable a lot of plug-ins, apps and add-ons shenanigans are not yet 100% compatible. So BEWARE and TEST your stuff before diving-in. I have a Mule machine that I load with new installs for my own tests, and I'm very thorough and prudent. I won't upgrade my main system before some time.

Apple conveniently explains how to make a bootable USB flash drive installer with Mojave  in this support page, using the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal.

But first, download Mojave from the Apple Store, and Quit the installation when the installer opens.

Mojave install file is 5.7GB according to Apple.

Check that your computer and graphic card are on the list. 

For MacPro owners like myself, the upgraded graphic card must be Metal capable:
macOS Mojave requires a graphics card that supports Metal, an Apple technology that lets the system and apps efficiently tap into the capabilities of today’s graphics processors (GPUs). The graphics cards offered by Apple in Mac Pro (Mid 2010) and Mac Pro (Mid 2012) don't have GPUs that support Metal, so these systems require upgraded graphics cards in order to install macOS Mojave.

And for some reason you must be on High Sierra before the upgrade:
Before you upgrade to macOS Mojave on these Mac Pro models, you need to update to macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 and then make sure that your graphics card is compatible. You also need to turn off FileVault. First, use the Mac App Store to update your operating system to macOS High Sierra 10.13.6. Don't upgrade your Mac Pro (Mid 2010) or Mac Pro (Mid 2012) to macOS Mojave directly from macOS versions prior to 10.13.6.

I will soon install Mojave on my second MacPro machine and will report any hiccups with my usual apps in future posts. Let me know how it performs on your system in the comments below. Cheers!