How do I 'just simply' deal with this huge SYSTEM DATA report?

[TuckerdogAVL]

Why is it seem it's always SOMETHING I moved the 300gb iMovie library. Docs: 82gb check. i Cloud Drive: 74GB check Photos: 27gb. Everything else in the mb range....preparing the 1TB move to the 512GB new Mac Mini arriving today .... then I see "only 265 gb available on current 1TB Fusion."
Huh?
I just cleaned out 400+gb ... oh wait what is this?
SYSTEM DATA 512 GB..... FIVE HUNDRED AND TWELVE GIG. That's the entire NEW Mac Mini!
How do I deal with that? What's in there? Containers are showing empty (remember, I moved the iMovie library, no music showing in containers, only 10GB total anyway.
Check it out. What am I missing?

 

[TuckerdogAVL]

I just rebooted thinking after all this moving and deleting and trashing that maybe something would change it did. It's now larger.

 

[Satcomer]

on your new Mac running Ventura apple locks down the system Drive to stop files trying use the main Library that trojans use!
So it also prevents externals from mounting unless you give permission!

 

[TuckerdogAVL]

on your new Mac running Ventura apple locks down the system Drive to stop files trying use the main Library that trojans use!
So it also prevents externals from mounting unless you give permission!

Does this answer my question? Does the new mac attempt to copy system drive files? Will I have to make decisions on what files and folders I have to bring over or can I use migration assistant? What is the actual size of the stuff I'm bringing over since 512GB of it is the system data? ....

 

[DeltaMac]

The largest variable in your System Data will probably be Cache files, perhaps other temporary files.
The Migration Assistant should not pull those over from the old Mac.
If it were to do that, you would get a warning similar to "not enough space on destination drive"

I know that everyone has to make decisions when purchasing a new system, but I would suggest that going with a smaller storage drive on a new machine may not be a good choice.

 

[TuckerdogAVL]

The largest variable in your System Data will probably be Cache files, perhaps other temporary files.
The Migration Assistant should not pull those over from the old Mac.
If it were to do that, you would get a warning similar to "not enough space on destination drive"

I know that everyone has to make decisions when purchasing a new system, but I would suggest that going with a smaller storage drive on a new machine may not be a good choice.

Couldn't afford the 1TB. Best Buy was the choice because Apple care is included with Total Tech. And since I have 5GB of External backing all kinds of stuff up, I figured what diff does it make? After all, the trend is a smaller hard drive on the laptop now and everything is saved externally on in the awesome cloud.