_EXTERNAL_DATA growing big

Bugs or Unexpected Behavior
1

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I have a vague memory of Andreas telling me to turn on collecting external data in some troubleshooting operation.

Now, I’ve probably collected enough:

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image1000×266 91 KB

(Don’t look at me, I didn’t choose the colors.)

But I don’t remember how I turned it on, and I can’t figure out how to turn it off. I looked through all emails from Andreas, and I checked here at the forum, but I can’t find the instructions for how to turn it on.

I could of course just clear out the folder and I’ll be good for a few years, but it would be nice to know how to turn it off. Anyone got any ideas?

2

are you using BTT's clipboard manager? if so clearing the contents should remove most (but you will lose the clips).

Otherwise mostly trigger data like icons for floating menus etc are stored in that

3
  1. I cleared out the folder.
  2. It didn’t give me an space back. I had about 50 GB free, deleted 173 GB of files, and now I have 54 GB free…
  3. My BTT clipboard history is still there, including images etc, even though the folder is empty.

Before deleting, I had a look in some files. The were all named with some sort of GUID, and they contained a mix of garbage text and text snippets I recognize as things I have copied.

I tried copying some stuff, but the folder is still empty.

4

it just stores "bigger" things of a clipboard item, the sqlite database automatically decides which parts of an item go into the external data folder - the "preview shells" of the items will still be there but trying to load e.g. a bigger image in clipboard manager will fail.

But what do you mean you cleared it out but it didn't give any space back? Did you maybe just move it to trash? These are normal files so fully deleting them would definitely give the space back.

5

I moved them to trash (173 GB) and then emptied the trash. And now I have 52 GB free.

6

mh maybe some apfs shenanigans (do you maxbe have time machine enabled?), but what does your scanner show now when you run it?

7

No Time Machine, but yes, Apple is doing some strange stuff with the disk management.

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/disk3s3s1 926Gi 15Gi 45Gi 25% 453k 469M 0% /
devfs 204Ki 204Ki 0Bi 100% 706 0 100% /dev
/dev/disk3s6 926Gi 17Gi 45Gi 28% 17 469M 0% /System/Volumes/VM
/dev/disk3s4 926Gi 16Gi 45Gi 26% 2.0k 469M 0% /System/Volumes/Preboot
/dev/disk3s2 926Gi 786Mi 45Gi 2% 519 469M 0% /System/Volumes/Update
/dev/disk1s2 500Mi 6.0Mi 477Mi 2% 1 4.9M 0% /System/Volumes/xarts
/dev/disk1s1 500Mi 5.6Mi 477Mi 2% 34 4.9M 0% /System/Volumes/iSCPreboot
/dev/disk1s3 500Mi 6.7Mi 477Mi 2% 74 4.9M 0% /System/Volumes/Hardware
/dev/disk3s1 926Gi 831Gi 45Gi 95% 11M 469M 2% /System/Volumes/Data
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 - /System/Volumes/Data/home
/dev/disk2s1 5.0Gi 1.9Gi 3.0Gi 40% 65 32M 0% /System/Volumes/Update/SFR/mnt1
/dev/disk4s1 1.0Gi 785Mi 273Mi 75% 21k 4.3G 0% /Volumes/Cursor Installer
caja:/volume1/Media 35Ti 17Ti 18Ti 50% 0 0 - /Volumes/Media
caja:/volume1/Dev 35Ti 17Ti 18Ti 50% 0 0 - /Volumes/Dev
/dev/disk3s3 926Gi 15Gi 45Gi 25% 455k 469M 0% /System/Volumes/Update/mnt1

The scanner reports 51GB free (and 0 bytes in _EXTERNAL_DATA).