I recently got a MacBook Air and in less than a month, I noticed that my write usage is already at 3.95 TB, which seems really high to me. I've only installed a few apps like Steam, Scrivener, and some photography software, and I mostly keep it in sleep mode instead of shutting it down. I've been using BlueStacks for a casual game, but I removed it recently thinking it might be contributing to the high write volume. I also work with large files, as I often edit images that can take up to 1 GB, and I save frequently to avoid losing progress. I checked with Homebrew Smart tools and saw the 3.95 TB mark, which is concerning since this drive is brand new. To make things more complicated, my iCloud is full, and I have Time Machine off. The top process using resources seems to be 'cloudd,' and I've heard that Rosetta caused issues with M1 chips in the past. How can I help manage this situation? Should I be shutting down my Mac more often?
3 Answers
Try using an app like GrandPerspective or something similar to analyze what's taking up space on your drive. If you find it’s not regular files, you might want to consider backing up your important data and resetting your Mac to see if that helps.
Keep in mind that your Mac might have come with some data already written to the SSD from the factory. If it remains stable and only increases slightly over time, it might not be a big issue at all.
I did notice it shot up by 20 GB overnight while it was in sleep mode though, so I'm a bit anxious about that.
You might want to check if BlueStacks was using your storage as swap space because that can significantly increase write cycles. Since you've uninstalled it, it’s a good step. But if you're still seeing large amounts of writes, it could be worth monitoring for a little while longer.
I deleted BlueStacks, but now I'm seeing about 20 GB of writes overnight. Is that concerning?
I don't suspect it's files taking up that much space. Maybe around 100-140 GB total. I think it might be some kind of cache that's being written constantly? Would GrandPerspective still be helpful?