One drive online files take space on Macbook

Hi,

I just solved the problem in a different way.

I had similar issues, specifically out of all the folders in the 'one-drive' root, I only had one subfolder of 200MB synced. However, the root folder took up 17GB. I didn't find any reason for this, but even though I copied the files inside the drive folder normaly and then freed space for all except that folder by selecting them (multiple selection and clicking free-up space), it kept them on disk and set only the cloud icon.

I now selected all the folders in root and did free-up space again. So far 13GB have been freed and counting. 

Seems like a bug in the "Free up space' routine.

Best,

Florian

Hi. 

1. I'm glad you found a solution. 
2. Macintosh HD - Data is not (usually) because of a failed install. It's a result of a Catalina install and will be there normally. It's where all of a user's data is stored - system files are on the other partition. Deleting MHD - Data  might fix the OneDrive problem, and it may be necessary, and it MAY cause a problem of deleting all other files. 

You are correct. In my case the install failed because there was not enough space on the hard drive. Normally the Catalina install also shouldn't cause the new volume to suck up all the space. You are right about the other files. I should have mentioned that you absolutely have to do a backup before you delete the volume.

Hi. 

1. I'm glad you found a solution. 
2. Macintosh HD - Data is not (usually) because of a failed install. It's a result of a Catalina install and will be there normally. It's where all of a user's data is stored - system files are on the other partition. Deleting MHD - Data  might fix the OneDrive problem, and it may be necessary, and it MAY cause a problem of deleting all other files.

I have the same issue, however I have had this same problem with Dropbox before I switched to OneDrive. A huge portion of my Macintosh HD disk is taken up by greyed out "other" storage, and when you click on "manage storage", all those files that are OneDrive only are showing up. If you delete them, you gain that space, but if you then put them on OneDrive again, even if purely online, your available space decreases again by that amount. Clearly the Mac is counting these fields towards storage, and the frustrating thing about that is that you run out of space. It's not just cosmetic as the responses here have tried to suggest. I find myself constantly having to empty my recycling because I'm working with a free space of just 3 GB by now. 

Ok so I figured it out! It definitely was a Mac problem. From what I've read elsewhere, it has to do with a failed Catalina install. Catalina creates a new volume on your disk called Macintosh HD - Data, in addition to the disk that's already there called Macintosh HD. And somehow most of that volume was greyed out for me as "other." To fix it I started up in recovery/safe mode (hold shift during startup), then went to disk utilities, clicked on the Macintosh HD - Data volume and first unmounted it and then erased it (simply erasing it might be sufficient). Voila! All that hard space was recovered. See here for instructions: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496 

FYI now that I've reconnected OneDrive, it still does that weird thing where it shows all your OneDrive files as taking up a ton of space when you click on "manage" in the about my Mac/storage utility, but this doesn't affect my free space anymore. I went from hovering at 10 gig free space with a lot of babying, to now having 440 gig free space. 

*** NOTE: make sure you do a full backup of all your files to an external drive before erasing the - Data volume, I forgot to mention that earlier.

My company replaced Dropbox with OneDrive — migrating the files from the former to the latter.

So there are were the same collective size of files syncing in both places — and i did NOT run out of space on my laptop with Dropbox using their form of selective sync.