| Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| MacBook hard drive full -- tips? | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 25 2009, 12:49 AM (1,833 Views) | |
| musicasacra | Jan 25 2009, 12:49 AM Post #1 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
I got an error message today about a lack of space on my hard drive. Unbelievably, I have 2GB of free space on a 200GB hard drive! I just came from a 100GB PC so I can't believe I have accumulated 100GB in a few months. I'm wondering if I have copies of files. Or big files sitting in a folder I haven't checked. Any tips or utility programs recommended? I've already emptied various trashes, deleted old mail, deleted unneeded photos, and deleted unneeded applications. I'm next emptying out my Downloads folder -- I see some application downloads that I've installed so I'm sure I can delete them at this point. |
![]() |
|
| jon-nyc | Jan 25 2009, 01:47 AM Post #2 |
|
Cheers
|
You've thought of everything I would think of. The only other thing I would do is look at the size of each of the top level folders to see where all the space is being used, and move down from there. Maybe you'll find some unnecessary large files. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jan 25 2009, 04:23 AM Post #3 |
|
Finally
|
Look at podcasts, particularly video podcasts. They are space hogs. It's in the users/MS/music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts folder. You can delete them directly from iTunes, however. My podcasts are 36 gigs. Another space hog is your mail attachments. All those cute movies that people send you...well. Probably the biggest thing is your music, however. I don't keep my music on my main hard drive - it's attached to external hard drives. With a laptop, there are other ways to do it. Probably the easiest is to keep the music on a desktop computer and have iTunes on that machine. Allow sharing of the iTunes library from the desktop computer, and your laptop will see the library and you can listen to the music that way. Only drawback is that iTunes must be running on the server. Another alternative is Network Attached Storage (a hard drive that is attached to your router) for all your big files. I don't know much about that, however. To see what's where, open a new window, and hit "Command J" - "View Options." Check "Calculate Folder Sizes" and the computer will tell you how big each folder is. I wouldn't mess with the "System" or "Library" folders (you can't with Unix anyway) at the top level of the computer, but in your users folder, you can see what's what. Mark is the guru on this...send him a PM. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| Axtremus | Jan 25 2009, 05:28 AM Post #4 |
|
HOLY CARP!!!
|
Use this piece of software called "Disk Sweeper" -- it's free, it combs through your hard drive and present you with a list of files sorted by file size, largest ones first: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/ |
![]() |
|
| Mikhailoh | Jan 25 2009, 06:45 AM Post #5 |
|
If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
|
Well doesn't that work well. Thanks, Ax. I found out that no one but me EVER empties their trash. 6 GB right there. (We only have 70 GB on our Mac, but a 400 GB external) |
|
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
![]() |
|
| musicasacra | Jan 25 2009, 08:44 AM Post #6 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
When I went to bed last night, I had 2.08GB free. First thing this morning, I have 1.84GB free. Haven't touched it from last night. |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jan 25 2009, 08:49 AM Post #7 |
|
Finally
|
Your machine is under warantee, right? Call Apple tomorrow and ask. Or, better yet, make an appointment at the genius bar at the Apple store. It's free and they can offer all kinds of tips. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| musicasacra | Jan 25 2009, 08:54 AM Post #8 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
Yes, that's plan B. Plan A and plan A(1) was checking with my brother and checking here. Brother is taking a look at it later today. Mozy is backing up my documents, iTunes, photos, movies, mail, address book, calendar, and bookmarks. That should be the majority of my GBs, I would think. All of that amounts to only 30GB. But my 200GB hard drive is full??? |
![]() |
|
| George K | Jan 25 2009, 09:13 AM Post #9 |
|
Finally
|
I wonder if Mozy isn't writing some kind of huge temporary files.... Another suggestion. Restart the computer. That may clear out some temp caches as well. |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| dolmansaxlil | Jan 25 2009, 09:20 AM Post #10 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
Mozy does create a copy as it encodes - and the copy is large. But it's not as big as the source file - so it shouldn't be more than 30GB. |
|
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson My Flickr Photostream | |
![]() |
|
| Frank_W | Jan 25 2009, 09:51 AM Post #11 |
![]()
Resident Misanthrope
|
(Dropping $2.00 in MS's cup....) |
|
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
![]() |
|
| 1hp | Jan 25 2009, 11:03 AM Post #12 |
|
Fulla-Carp
|
I wonder if virus's and spyware are starting to target Macs? I had a similar problem on my daughter's WinXP machine a few years back - turned out there was a program running in the background replicating files and filling up diskspace. Took me a couple of days, and several anti spyware prgrams to clean it all up. |
| There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................ | |
![]() |
|
| musicasacra | Jan 25 2009, 02:40 PM Post #13 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
Just came back from lunch, and I now have 13GB free! 11GB just freed up without me doing a thing. There must be a temp file or something going on. I'm using Time Machine to back up to an external hard drive, Mozy to back up online, and MobileMe to synch some basics with my iPhone. I still need more space than 13GB. My brother is going to iChat in to my Mac and take a look around. George, yes, I did reboot along with the other usual things, emptying trashes, etc., yesterday. |
![]() |
|
| Frank_W | Jan 25 2009, 02:46 PM Post #14 |
![]()
Resident Misanthrope
|
(dropping two more dollars in MS's tip cup...) Jeez... That's all I've got, sistah! ![]()
|
|
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
![]() |
|
| musicasacra | Jan 25 2009, 02:47 PM Post #15 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
|
![]() |
|
| musicasacra | Jan 25 2009, 05:06 PM Post #16 |
![]()
HOLY CARP!!!
|
By the time my brother remoted in to my Mac, my free space was up to 24GB! Without me touching a thing! I'm still missing about 25GB. I might take it into the Apple store. We did discover that iTunes keeps previous versions on the hard drive. So I think I can delete the old versions. But that's an easy fix because I can see it. Not sure where the missing 25GB is. EDIT: skip that, now I have 44GB free. that's getting close to where it should be. i haven't done a thing to it -- weird. |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic » |










8:45 AM Jul 13