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GrandPerspective?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
WinDirStat is an absolute lifesaver.
For those of you who don't know, WinDirStat is a nifty little program that visually maps what is taking up space on your hard drive, it makes it VERY easy to find large files that you don't need anymore but forgot to delete, whenever I need space it always finds me like 100GB of actual garbage to clear out. It's totally free (and open source) too, no "trial period" bullshit.
EDIT:
LINUX ALTERNATIVE: http://xdiskusage.sourceforge.net/
MAC ALTERNATIVE: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
(I have not tried either, they were posted in comment replies)
I'm a fan of GrandPerspective: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
You point it at a target drive or folder, it scans it, and gives you a visual representation of what's taking up space. There are a few applications around which do more or less the same thing, but I've found this one pretty decent and it's free if you download it from their website.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net This app is free, and it gives you a graphic representation of every file and folder on your Mac. Large files are large squares and large folders are large sections of squares. While hovering over a square, the app shows you the complete file path to it.
“Other” is just everything not in the other categories. It could just as well be named “Everything else”. Install GrandPerspective to find out what’s using that space.
As the aforementioned thread points out, there are a great number of tools to figure out what is on your drive. I really like Grand Perspective. Find forgotten virtual machines, movies, games, etc.
The link doesn't mention that for casual Mac users, the huge "others" tend to be backups that have accumulated over time, sometimes from their iOS devices, sometimes from TimeMachine being left on but the backup drive never being plugged in so the file changes can be flushed off to the backup disk. At least, this is my anecdotal experience when supporting my luddite SO's and families' Macs.
Disk Inventory X is a solid program.
I personally use Grand Perspective http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
Within both programs you'll see a visual representation of your hard drive, and what is taking up space. If you backup iOS devices to iTunes, you'll likely find MobileSync is using a good amount of space.
GrandPerspective. It's a free app that scans a folder (including the root folder of your entire storage volume) and shows a nice graph of which files are taking up space.
Apps to help you:
- Grand Perspective ( http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ )
- Disk Inventory X ( http://www.derlien.com/downloads/index.html )
- Baseline ( http://baseline.en.softonic.com/mac )
General recommendations:
- Do you sync a couple of iDevices? Switch to iCloud. Saved me ~40GB of data as I could just delete the iOS apps and iOS backups from my MBP
- Clear Caches (use CCleaner from App Store or an alternative). The browsers, app setup files, temp files, DNS caches, etc. These will build up again, some are cleared by OSX periodically, some you have to do manually.
- Old/unused apps, everybody has some in their Applications folder. Some are the bundled ones. Garageband, iMovie, iPhoto, etc. can take a lot of space and many people use other alternatives.
> I'm hoping to get my macbook a little faster
But all this is not necessarily going to speed up your Macbook. I suggest upgrading RAM (if <4GB) and upgrading your HDD to a SSD. That will have a significant impact.
Use GrandPerspectiv: grandperspectiv to scan your drive and locate which filles takes that space, then revert back to here we will tell you if, why and how to delete them...
EDIT: formatting
I think what you are looking for is an application like Daisy Disk. If you want to go the free route, take a look at Grand Perspective.
Get an app like Grand Perspective or DaisyDisk and use them to visualize your drive.
Nobody can give you advice on where to look because you could have files almost anywhere from any number of things.
Try using GrandPerspective to get a visual representation of all your files in your hard drive. The bigger the square, the bigger the file. Same folder = same color and they appear together as a group. I've been using it for a long time and it's really helpful. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
I like Space Gremlin because it lets you exclude folders easily. A good free alternative that has a easy to use graphical representation is GrandPerspective.
- Create a comprehensive backup
- Erase and reinstall macOS
- Manually restore (drag & drop) necessary data (yay spring cleaning)
- Make sure you have critical account credentials safeguarded
- Alternatively GrandPerspective is a great utility
Always have a great backup in place BEFORE you start manipulating your data.
Use a tool called Grandperspective: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
It will show you the files - every file on the disk, and you can easily remove the files as needed. Be careful to not remove system files.
I used GrandPerspective to see the real hogs of space that don't show up in programs like CleanMyMac and got rid of them. Just make sure you know exactly what you're doing, you don't want to delete anything crucial risk losing data. I can't believe how much junk builds up from old uninstalled apps (despite using AppCleaner to uninstall apps).
Ok so if someone told you an initial Time Machine backup would take ten minutes that‘s just laughably wrong and I would ignore anything else they said.
That said I used Sierra and High Sierra for years and never heard of a “storage duplication bug” let alone experienced it. I still have a Mac on High Sierra, no issues.
I would stop the initial backup and run a scan of your SSD with the excellent and free GrandPerspective. It will visually show you all the files on your SSD; bigger blocks indicate bigger files. If you have a bunch the same size, hover over them to see if they’re duplicates.
Once you have a sense of where your storage is at, you can either proceed with Time Machine, or first go into Time Machine settings and exclude specific folders (as an example, old versions of Chrome have sometimes taken up a ton of space for me, as have old iOS backups and iOS installers, called IPSWs). Don’t go crazy with excluding if you don’t know what things are because they could be important and won’t be recoverable if you don’t back them up and then erase your SSD, which is a good performance boosting tip.
First, the operating system itself takes up a lot of space.
Second, download GrandPerspective - it's free, open source, reliable and will give you lots of details about where your disk space is going.
Download GrandPerspective and scan the system
> GrandPerspective is a small utility application for Mac that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system. It can help you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which files and folders take up the most space. It uses a so called tree map for visualisation. Each file is shown as a rectangle with an area proportional to the file's size. Files in the same folder appear together, but their placement is otherwise arbitrary.
UPDATE:
I fixed the problem and reclaimed 43GB of space. Here's what I did:
Installed GrandPerspective as recommended by /u/Godders1
Opened Terminal and ran
security execute-with-privileges /A*/GrandPerspective.app//M/* 2>&-
This displayed the hidden files in my system and showed that /.MobileBackups.trash/ was taking up a huge chunk of space.
Next, in Terminal I ran
sudo rm -rf /.MobileBackups.trash
Profit!
Thanks!
Grand Perspective is a pretty decent way to visualize file sizes and determine what's eating up all of your space. By default it shows all files; you can probably use a filter to narrow it down to applications only.
I've not tried it on 10.10...
The default is to put it in your documents folder.
What you need to grab (aside from an external drive!) is GrandPerspective.
It's a free OS X app that will show you a visual map of what is taking up space where on your system.
Grand Perspective is a free app that will display a visual representation of every file on your computer. Just make sure when you select which folder to scan, you choose the root level of the Macintosh HD.
I've never used Omnidisk. Have you tried using GrandPerspectiv? That's been my go to for allocating drive space. Just make sure you scan the Macintosh HD, not just the Applications folder.
What processes are running and take the most memory/cpu (use the Activity Monitor)? Use GrandPerspective to see what is taking up your disk space. Also, use Activity Monitor again to see which processes are writing to your disk.
Try using GrandPerspective, it can perform a full system scan and visually show you where all your used space is located. Also, its free.
There's no single location to look for these. Homebrew packages should be in /usr/local. RVM could either be in your user directory or in /etc. Java is probably in /Library.
In any case, I'd recommend using a graphical tool to show you what areas of the filesystem are taking up the most space. These are applications that I've used before:
- Disk Inventory X (freeware)
- Grand Perspective (freeware)
- Daisy Disk (shareware)
I often find that videos, pictures and music take up a lot more space than all of my hidden programs.
Grand Perspective is a third-party OS X app that maps a given drive/folder and provides a visual representation of how the space used.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
I lived by this thing when I was dual-booting Mavericks and Yosemite and was space-limited.
You're running out of RAM and your system is Paging ram to your SSD. Definitely free up some space - Grand Perspective will let you see what is taking up so much space (or let you delete the largest stuff first.)
You could use one of these programs to locate where on the disk the space is used:
Btw., where did you get the number from? About this Mac? And which version of OS X?
Those are relative sizes of all the files on my macbook, grouped by the folder they are in.
The big blob on the top left is my iTunes folder, the blob of orange bellow it is my torrents.
The program is called GrandPerspective, you can mouse over any square and see the filename/location on the bottom, it also highlights all the files in the same folder as that file. Very mesmerizing.
I like GrandPerspective. It can help you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which files and folders take up the most space. Delete files with the click of a button.
It's probably other video that the OS decides can't be played by QuickTime. (like AVI or MKV)
I would recommend this old little program to really suss out what's what.
One of the following programs could help you to see much better what takes up how much space: Disk Inventory X (free), GrandPerspective (also free) or DaisyDisk (beautiful but not free).
Everything which doesn't fit in the other categories, many system files for example.
You can use Disk Inventory X (free), GrandPerspective (also free) or DaisyDisk (beautiful but not free) to explore what it is in detail.
Be very careful if you're going to delete something, especially if you don't know what it is.
You may be interested in GrandPerspective. This great piece of software give you a visual representation of the sizes of files on your computer. A great way to locate bulky unneeded files.
You can use a program like Grand Perspective or Disk Inventory X to get a visual representation of your storage usage, and find some big files to delete or move to external media. If you use Windows, I highly recommend the program these are based off of, WinDirStat.
> Wanted to use it for my external display.
Like, use the laptop as a display? Laptops can't do that.
> Trying to free up space on it has 500gb storage and have 400gb in OTHER? Can anyone help me out?
Use GrandPerspective to get a complete view of everything on the drive: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
I use Disc Inventory X to see what is actually taking up space on my HDD and SSD.
Or Grand Perspective.
Probably a small error, but it’s possible and unlikely you have corruption.
Run a scan over your entire disk using Grand Perspective, and you’ll see where your disk space is going.
This may not be a solution, more of a good utility that might help identify the problem. Grand Perspective will scan your hard drive and map everything out in about 5 - 10 minutes depending on size / speed of the drive. Very handy for me since our students frequently install and uninstal games, but don't do it right. It's usually fort night. They'll remove the epic game client and leave the game which makes 'system' 70 gb larger than its supposed to. It would be impossible to locate without Grand Perspective.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
Any way, hope that helps!
You can use an application like Grand Perspective or Disk Inventory X to periodically analyze which folders are growing more than you want. They provide a visual map of disk space usage, like a large file will stand out as the largest rectangle in the map, very easy to spot. And they show invisible files.
Try installing Grand Perspective to see what is taking up all of your space. BTW that is definitely not normal, my mac is only 128GB but less than half of that is being used
Crypto
Paranoia Encryption, una colección de programas que permite encriptar y desencriptar texto y archivos, para todas las plataformas que conozco, y con un extra de un administrador de contraseñas para móviles. Desde "AES 256bit", pasando por "Blowfish 448bit", una justa variedad de algoritmos te permite encriptar lo que quieras con la contraseña que quieras.
Disk usage
GrandPerspective Solo para Mac, una herramienta que grafica el uso de una jerarquía de archivos que especifiques. Como du o ncdu, pero con una interfaz gráfica bidimensional muy atractiva. También está DaisyDisk, pero me gusta más la geometría de GP.
If time machine is turned on and hasn’t been backed up in a while, there will be snapshots stored for quick backup indexing.
Also, I prefer grandperspectiv myself for finding large files for deletion.
Just checking....I'm not a FCP user but does it keep it's own "trash" files? You might look there. Also get a disk space visualizer like Grand Perspective http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net There are others also. It will show you quickly what is hogging the drive space.
Yes, Disk Utility would've been my first recommendation. Random errors can lead the file system allocating chunks of storage that aren't associated with any file. Don't know why it would have assigned them to the System folder, but I've seen weirder things before.
168gb is still crazy-large, though. I've got an MBP that's been incrementally upgraded through like four versions of MacOS... my System folder is only 9.1gb.
I suspect that that "purgeable" data covers almost all of that extra space. It's not clear whether you've actually purged it yet or have only identified it as purgeable - but that's where I'd focus for now.
As another option - I know you've already used Daisy Disk and Disk Inventory X, and neither one has given you the information you need. Try running Grand Perspective - it's my go-to utility of this type, and it's free (or $1.99 from the App Store). It might access and report your file system in a different way than the others.
If none of that stuff works, you can boot into a MacOS recovery mode and just reinstall your system files, without altering anything else. It probably won't be a 100% seamless repair - seems like some small things always change whenever I go through these types of processes - but probably won't actually break anything. Might be a relatively painless solution.
Turn off local time machine backups and run http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net to find any extra crap on your system. If you find yourself only opening Photos occasionally you can also move the whole library to an external hdd and only plug it in when needed. A time machine back up followed by a system restore and then restore from time machine can also squeak out and extra few GBs.
Download this and scan your drive-
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
It will show large files are coloured blocks you can delete/view in finder.
Dont remove systems files or vm files
The built in disk usage is flawed...
Use GrandPerspective (also available via brew cask) and scan Macintosh HD, it gives you a nice visual with larger squares = using more space. Hover mouse over the larger squares and it will show at the bottom the name/directory of whats eating up all your space.
Download Grand Perspective, which will give a visual report of your hard disk usage. Scan your disk once when you have just restarted, and leave the window open or save the report. Run it again when you are noticing your disk space being eaten. Compare the two and report on what has appeared. Probably one big file or a folder filling up with tiny files.
GrandPerspective is probably the most basic. It scans the folder your chosen (you can select the whole hard drive) and then graphically shows you the largest files.
I'm running Yosemite 10.10.2, and it works without a problem.
What model computer do you have? When you Get Info on your startup disk how much free space does it show? I recommend using a program like Grand Perspective to scan the drive and see what's eating up the space. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
Using an application like Daisy Disk, Grand Perspective, or Disk Inventory X will give you a much better picture of what is taking up space on your hard drive and where it is. Personally, I like Daisy Disk the most, thanks to the easy and visually appealing interface, but they'll all accomplish the same thing.
I've used GrandPerspective to figure it out. It's got a nice graphical representation of file sizes, and it's free. Just don't delete something if you aren't sure what it is. There's a lot of bundles like the iTunes and iPhoto libraries that show up as monolithic to the filesystem.
Delete stuff. Use a program like Grand Perspective if you want to find bigger files to delete. Right click offending files and choose show in Finder to delete them easily.
I don't think Disk Inventory X has been updated in a while. GrandPerspective does a similar function, but has some other features that can be handy. Worth checking either of them out, though.
The key (of course) is to delete large files...and leave the small ones that don't matter. If you're desperate, reboot, and you'll reset any memory that's been 'paged' out to your hard drive. You should have a minimum of 2-3x the ram on your machine free...and probably 15-20 gigs would be a better minimum.
That's good news. What I'd do next is choose "About This Mac" from the menu in Finder and click the "More Info..." button. When the window opens, click Storage and see if Backups are taking up any space. You can disable the local snapshots (backups) and reclaim the space they're using by entering this command in Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
If that doest show any major space used, then I'd download either DiskWave or GrandPerspective and see if you can find what's taking up so much space in either of them.
Then, yeah, you're using that amount of space.
Not sure how anyone can have 100 gigs of music, even with ALAC files, but you do (My 77 comes from having Logic Studio installed). And some video content.
Of course, video content is easier to amass…
Use Spotlight to find the stuff and delete it if you don't want it anymore. Or just… open Macintosh HD in the Finder and dig down like that.
Oh, what am I saying?! Use GrandPerspective to find it all!
I use GrandPerspective as well. It presents a Treemap to demonstrate the subdirectory structure. So, not only will you know which movie files or backup files are taking up space. You will be able to see exactly how much media you have, and what subdirectories are incredibly bloated.
I like GrandPerspective for scanning Macintosh HD to visually check larger files.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
ios and iPadOS backups can take a ton of space and I believe are “other”
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
Use this to visually see what's taking up space.
Even a 128 GB SSD would have arrived with >100 GB free, if it only had 20 out of the box, it was defective, I'm not sure why you've just been living with it for two years.
These are the file that the Mac can't assign to a category. Also use Grand Perspective, it will show you all the big files in some cubes, so it's easy to delete some.
Just give a look at http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
It allow you to scan all files on your system and have a visual look of the largest files and directories.
It sounds like finding where the file is may help? I recently had to find a 64gb file so I could delete it. I used Grand Perspective which is a free program that scans your drive and shows graphically all the files on your drive according to size. It found the file I was looking for deep in an Application Support folder.
diskinventoryx is it as per @walthwhite, grand perspective is also a good similar application - http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
There is also a built in utility that might accomplish what you want. Apple logo>About this mac>storage>manage (this is a good place to poke around as well)> Reduce clutter/Review files
Ok. When you delete something it is moved to recycle bin and not deleted till you empty the recycle bin or it happens automatically after 30 days if enabled in finder settings. If it is not recycle bin either, then download grandperspektive and get an easy overview over which folders/files is taking up how much space.
The APFS filesystem has a feature called snapshot that when you want to make a backup, it can create a local snapshot so that the live data on the drive can still be changed while the backup is in progress. If you are very low on disk space, you can run into this error. To understand a little more how snapshots work, check out this article. It has a step where it can clean up snapshots.
I assume you have a 128GB drive in your MacBook Air. What you need to do is move some files to the WD Elements external drive. You mention that you can't move any more files as you have gone through them all. I don't think that is accurate as 128GB is plenty for the OS to have space, but the user data may be too large. One thing you should try is to run through the steps in the article I referenced to clean up the snapshots, then download the GrandPerspective tool to scan your drive and show you want is taking up the space. This may help you move or delete data that you may not be aware of.
I've found GrandPerspective incredibly useful for managing disk space and discovering large files in unexpected locations (it will search most "hidden" directories so has a good shot at finding whatever this is).
(Also, uh, this might be a case where I'd seriously wonder if it's actually worth it to do the upgrade, the extra space big sur requires over previous versions will be very noticeable on a disk of this size I think.)
You can use software like Grand Perspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/) to see the largest files/folders on your Mac and delete any you don't need.
I use a visual drive analyzer like GrandPerspective. I always find some unneeded files that way. Maybe that can help a little.
Also you could use OnyX that can help with clearing caches and such.
The way macos presents the information is opaque, so I use a tool similar to daisydisk called grandperspective http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ to get a top-down view of what is taking up space on the disk. Just be mindful of what you delete...
for what it’s worth, the cleanmymac x app https://macpaw.com/cleanmymac is the easiest to use “all in one” cleaner app, and it’s legit since it’s been around a long time. that could help you
I like to use Grand Perspective to locate large unneeded files. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net
That's the fastest way to free up space. Make sure to check your user folders (Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Movies, Pictures, etc.). Stay away from the System Folder,
If you have specific needs for specific things, then use specific tools or scripts to accomplish them. For the VAST majority of users, tools like Clean My Mac X provide no value.
Think about it, if there were some magic scripts that made the Mac run better, wouldn't Apple be in the best position implement them?
With that said, Silent Knight is useful to keep on top of system updates, Grad Perspective is useful to get an idea of what might be taking up lots of storage space, and Onyx is useful for clearing caches without needing to remember how to delete each different one. All of them are free tools that run only when you tell them to rather than installing themselves deep withing the system to do things automagically.
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That’s not true. Hard drives don’t lose storage. Files do accumulate, I would also suggest you: Install GrandPerspective to find out what really is using your storage: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
I highly recommend using GrandPerspective! It lets you see what files and folders are using up the most space and where they're located. It also visualizes space usage in a nice way. Don't use automatic cleaning programs like CleanMyMac as they do more harm than good in my experience. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
it's a complicated question but when I'm trying to track down space hogging files I use a visualizer to help. this isn't the only option but it's worked well for me,
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
can search the whole drive or specific folders.
I would --
- Archive a release .ipa
- Open it using grand perspective: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
- Find the largest chunks and see if there's any way you can trim them down
Things to look out for are --
- Any media such as music/sound, or video, or image files that could be further compressed or offloaded to a CDN and downloaded at runtime
- 3rd party libraries that you can build out the functionality for on your own
Grand Perspective is the bomb if you want to find out where your space has gone. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
Free, but if you feel like auto updates and such you can pitch in a couple of bucks and get it from the App Store. Literally one of my first installs on every Mac I touch.
That second partition is probably recovery stuff, its normal.
I like using http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ to figure stuff out like this.
Are you using timemachine? Some backups are local and can go nuts if you have huge changing files like docker images or email data.
Yes, that is correct because this view lists Photos separately, but the library itself is also a document. It does not exist twice on your Mac.
In order to find out what really is using your space download and run this App here: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ It will visually show you how your storage is being used
Download Grand Perspective or Disk Inventory X. They will let you see visually what's taking up space on your drive. Make sure you know what you're deleting before you nuke something, randomly deleting folders from the Libraries or System is a good way to make your computer unusable.
I think it's criminal Apple sells those things with 128GB drives. If you use it for more than light internet browsing and basic word processing it's Not. Enough. Space. And of course you can't actually expand it...
Just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean you don't need it.
- Stop shouting. Save your ALL CAPS for emergencies.
- It's not a container. It's a drive. Containers are something different. It's also not "volume", volumes are something different.
- "Other" just means Mac OS doesn't know what those files are. Those could be game save files, videos, or whatever else you use your computer for.
Download a tool like Grand Perspective it will help you figure out how your using your drive.
I recommend using GrandPerspective to scan your entire hard drive and then manually delete the files you find to be unnecessary. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ (it's free and open-source) I strongly suggest not using "magic" programs like Clean My Mac since, speaking from past experience, might do more harm than good.
Basically, what everyone is telling you is that you want a tool that does an analysis and reports (and accesses) what's on your drive.
I used Grand Perspective for years, until I switched to DaisyDisk. Same general thing.
I recommend using Grand Perspective http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ to scan your disk space usage and get an overview over what files and folders taking up space. Then you can get rid of files you don't need (after making sure they're not required).
I strongly advise you not to use "Clean my Mac" or similar scammy programs since they usually end up doing more harm than good (speaking from experience).
This is normally a local time Machine Backup or if you plug your iPhone into charge ir will keep making iOS backups.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
Use this as it free and scan the disk and it will find what's using all the system.
Us an app like GrandPerspectiv http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/. It’s fantastic to analyze where space is used on a hard disk. I found 46 GB of temporary data by some Adobe products with it and about as much render files by Final Cut.
Check if you have Time Machine enabled but haven’t connected your backup disk in awhile. This can lead to Time Machine local snapshots taking up space. You can either connect the drive you were/had been using to backup and let it complete one backup, or you can turn off Time Machine and then turn it back on when you’re ready to backup. You can also install a utility like GrandPerspective to see a graphical representation of what’s taking up large blocks of space on the flash storage, and also delete them from there.
What application did you run to clean up your files? Was it an automatic process or was it something like that GrandPerspective that shows you a graphical representation of the files and folders on your system?
I have my Trash set to automatically empty after 30 days. I use GrandPerspective to display what files take up a lot of space on my computer. It really helps to visualize large files or large folders. I currently have 130GB of Other but I should probably cut down on that.
A better option is to download an app called Grand Perspective, which gives a visual display of all the files/directories on a disk volume. Incredibly useful to see what's taking up your hard drive space at a glance.
I like the other programs recommended here, but the one I've found works the best and on the most operating systems is called Grand Perspective.
it will show you a very handy breakdown of everything.
I will say the likely culprits in order of size are usually:
old iPhoto library, iPhone backups, old iPhone app backups..
happy hunting!
Also, sometimes it's SUPER beneficial to just wipe the machine and start over. you'll see a large increase in performance and your storage will start over! (just make sure to backup first)
are we on 6 or 7 ? it's all a blur hehe.
That's an interesting conundrum. I hadn't heard of daisydisk before so thanks for that.
I've been using Grand Perspective for yonks - i just realised my version is from 2016 so i updated to the version on the website. There's a free version via Sourceforge and a paid one through the App Store. Whilst more of a visualisation app, what happens if you try GrandPerspective ?
This is where the System storage is usually eaten up. It'll be in a hidden MobileBackups directory you can find with GrandPerspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net), which is the modern replacement for Disk Inventory X (same program, more options for visualizations and 64-bit clean).
I always use GrandPerspective to look for junk files, it gives you a nice graphical representation of the size of your files:
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ScreenShots/2_1_0-FoldersBujumbura.png
Download GrandPerspective. Use it to catalog all the files on whichever directory you selected (can take some time depending on the size of the directory) and then once it's completed it run, it will visually display a tiled representation of each file and their comparative sizes to each other. Then you can find any culprits taking up a bunch of space.
Well, you could try the free but kind of old Disk Inventory X app (it just now worked for me on my iMac running Sierra 10.12.6), or the $1.99 app on the App Store called Grand Perspective, which you can also download for free from its SourceForge page. I've been using a slightly older version of Grand Perspective for a while now and it works fine for what you're trying to do.
If you're willing to drop down into the Terminal app and get your hands dirty with the *nix find command that would be another free option, but it sounds like you'd rather not go that route.