"Other" storage causing issues

[UPBaylor]

My wife's MBP 13 inch Early 2015 is showing a massive 65 GB of "Other" storage that is hogging space and we can't find what it is. She's still running El Capitan and can't upgrade because she doesn't have enough memory space. I've tried all the Google searches trying to track down what is in the storage, but nothing of significance shows up. She uses the laptop sparingly and doesn't have media of significance stored on it (13 GB movies, 8 GB photos, etc. per the storage display in About This Mac). She uses it mainly for small numbers of Excel spreadsheets and web surfing. Nothing is showing up as hogging space except this generic "Other" category that we can't find despite following every tutorial out there - clearing cache, emptying trash, deleting text files, etc. But, nothing of significance is showing up in finder in terms of size.

Any suggestions on how to proceed? I feel like we're stuck since we can't find what is occupying this 65 GB. An upgrade to Catalina might offers more options since it will have the "Manage" storage button that isn't on El Capitan. I'm starting to think we need to just blow it up and start over.

 

[dsemf]

My wife's MBP 13 inch Early 2015 is showing a massive 65 GB of "Other" storage that is hogging space and we can't find what it is. She's still running El Capitan and can't upgrade because she doesn't have enough memory space. I've tried all the Google searches trying to track down what is in the storage, but nothing of significance shows up. She uses the laptop sparingly and doesn't have media of significance stored on it (13 GB movies, 8 GB photos, etc. per the storage display in About This Mac). She uses it mainly for small numbers of Excel spreadsheets and web surfing. Nothing is showing up as hogging space except this generic "Other" category that we can't find despite following every tutorial out there - clearing cache, emptying trash, deleting text files, etc. But, nothing of significance is showing up in finder in terms of size.

Any suggestions on how to proceed? I feel like we're stuck since we can't find what is occupying this 65 GB. An upgrade to Catalina might offers more options since it will have the "Manage" storage button that isn't on El Capitan. I'm starting to think we need to just blow it up and start over.

Using an administrator account, open a terminal window and enter the following command.

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

This will show the size of every first level file and directory. Most likely, the /User location will be the largest. You can drill down by extending the / at the end, such as /User and /User/<username> etc.

DS

 

[UPBaylor]

dsemf - Many thanks! I actually found a work around this morning, although not as sophisticated as your suggestion.

FWIW, I deleted enough things to have enough room to upgrade to Catalina which then allowed me to drill down on the storage in System Information. The big area I found were 3 separate iphone backups totaling 50 GB plus a few other items in the 5 GB range. All fixed now after off and on dealing with this for a while, including my wife doing a couple of "Genius" appointments where they were stumped. Such an annoying issue because it never seemed like it should be difficult to understand and rectify. Glad we finally got there. COVID lockdown gave me enough time to work the problem with longer focus.