FM Creating Ridiculous Large Amounts of Mysterious "System Data" on My Mac?

[Weston]

I've already submitted this issue as a proper support ticket, but I'm posting here publicly because I'm curious if anyone else is also experiencing the same issue?

I am using a MacBook Air (M1, 2020) running macOS Monterey Version 12.2.1 (21D62). I noticed that my device had ~300GB of "System Data" that was clogging up my hard drive. Neither myself nor Apple support could determine what this was or where it was coming from, so I was advised to backup my computer, wipe it completely, and then only drag back on what I specifically knew I needed until I could locate what was causing the issue.

When I went to drag the Sports Interactive folder from the hard drive to the Application Support folder on my laptop, it showed that it contained a total of 172GB across multiple editions of the game located within the folder. However, when it finished transferring, in addition to the GB added to the Documents category within my hard drive as expected, ~280GB of "System Data" suddenly appeared for no discernible reason, indicating that the problem stems from this folder.

I had not opened the game once since reinstalling, so it does not appear that this ~280GB of "System Data" was created by any user action within the platform, and as it did not appear to be present in the folder when it was present in the hard drive, it would seem that it was created somehow during the process of loading it into my Mac.

I was able to remove about 2/3 of the mysterious "System Data" by removing the past two FMs that were on this computer, meaning that ~1/3 of the ~280GB seems to correspond with FM23, specifically.

Anyone have any idea what is causing this and/or how to fix it? I should note that I do have various graphics and mods added (so it's completely reasonable to have a large file size for the folder due to facepacks, etc), however I do this every edition and never experienced this issue until this year.

[Svartowiz]

That sounds really strange. I realize it's not very helpful to your situation, but I can say that my custom FM folder under Application Support with a lot of graphics "only" contains 17,63GB of data and that's on a 2020 M1 MacBook as well. I'm on Ventura, but I don't recall having any problems before upgrading either.

[EdL]

I've not heard of this before, can you tell us what files specifically were taking up the space?

Also which store have you purchased FM on?

[Weston]

1 hour ago, Svartowiz said:

That sounds really strange. I realize it's not very helpful to your situation, but I can say that my custom FM folder under Application Support with a lot of graphics "only" contains 17,63GB of data and that's on a 2020 M1 MacBook as well. I'm on Ventura, but I don't recall having any problems before upgrading either.

Glad to hear you're having a better experience!

[Weston]

48 minutes ago, EdL said:

I've not heard of this before, can you tell us what files specifically were taking up the space?

Also which store have you purchased FM on?

That's the thing, I have no idea what they are, because "System Data" seems like a vague catch-all for things that can't be identified? The Sports Interactive folder itself says it's only 49GB, it's just that the system data wasn't there before I moved this folder on, and now it's here. In fact it even changes not infrequently - just checking now I somehow have a total of 490GB of the stuff! Where is it coming from and why?

I bought the game through Steam.

[EdL]

I don't really know what system data is tbh, but afaik I understand it FM shouldn't be doing anything it, I have FM on my macbook here and not seeing anything like that.

[Weston]

5 minutes ago, EdL said:

I don't really know what system data is tbh, but afaik I understand it FM shouldn't be doing anything it, I have FM on my macbook here and not seeing anything like that.

It's normal to have some system data floating around - sometimes it has to do with the operating system.

But this is a strange, extreme case - there must be some sort of bug where the game is creating something weird that my laptop can't properly classify, I guess. Hopefully the ticket I've opened can lead to a resolution.

[EdL]

Probably they'll come to me about it, as its my sort of ares of dev, but its the sort of thing that with no real explanation and no reproduction its very hard to say, will let QA see if they can repro anything similar themselves but I'm not seeing it here, albeit on an Intel mac (but can't really think why that would make a difference)

[Daniel Evensen]

Interesting issue, and one that I never faced with Monterey.  I did have a problem with my Intel iMac when I upgraded to Ventura, however, that rendered the graphics card useless for some random reason.

You probably don't want to hear this, but I got so frustrated that I switched straight over to Linux.  I'm on Pop!_OS now, and all of those issues are gone.  FM actually runs more smoothly, too.

Do you know what specific folder the data is (or was) stored in?  I've never trusted that general OSX breakdown of data by category.  Again, I'm biased by my negative experience, but I've got a feeling that OSX is creating this monster-sized data, and not FM.

[Weston]

13 hours ago, Daniel Evensen said:

Interesting issue, and one that I never faced with Monterey.  I did have a problem with my Intel iMac when I upgraded to Ventura, however, that rendered the graphics card useless for some random reason.

You probably don't want to hear this, but I got so frustrated that I switched straight over to Linux.  I'm on Pop!_OS now, and all of those issues are gone.  FM actually runs more smoothly, too.

Do you know what specific folder the data is (or was) stored in?  I've never trusted that general OSX breakdown of data by category.  Again, I'm biased by my negative experience, but I've got a feeling that OSX is creating this monster-sized data, and not FM.

I suspect it has to do with the interaction between the Mac and FM, as the folder seems completely normal and much smaller when on the my time machine backup. It's only once it's put on the laptop that this problem occurs - the documents section gets bigger during the transfer, as you'd expect, but the system data section does too simultaneously for no discernible reason.

I don't know where the files are, nor do I know what they are, I only know they appear when I add the Sports Interactive folder to my Mac's hard drive. I'm not sure if they even really exist of if my Mac is just confused somehow and thinks they do for some reason.