How to free space on an imac hard drive

My imac is showing that the hard drive is full however, I have tried several times to delete files, movies, and pictures to free space and its still shows zero space is available. Yesterday i freed 4.4GB and this morning when I turned it on its back to zero space available. Any ideas on what the problem could be would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Do you use the mac's mail application? If you do open up finder, then go to the menu bar and click go, then hold down option, and a hidden folder called "library" should appear in the drop down box. Click it. Find a folder called mail and click once on the folder "mail" then press and hold command and click the letter "i" on the top right of this little window it will give you a size, how big is it?

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How do I tell how tell how much free space is on my hard drive

How do to find how much space I have used on my HD and what free space exists?

Hi, thanks for this info. it helped me find the space number I've used. Can you tell me how much space is "169.5 MB" My MAC has 2GB.....have I used much? or more than half of my space? I ask because I have many photos and on my MAC and need to know if I should delete some since I had an issue with "Start Up Disk Being Full"

Adding free space back to my hard drive

I erased windows from my MAC and am trying to add the free space back to my hard drive in disk utility and I keep getting the error message... 'Could not modify partition map because filesystem verification failed'
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Or why it's saying this??
Thanks

You did not do this correctly. You should have used Boot Camp Assistant to remove the partition. You cannot use Disk Utility for this. Having done so is the reason for the error. You have only one thing you can do - repartition the entire hard drive.
1. Repair your OS X volume and permissions.
2. Backup your OS X system to an external drive.
3. Boot from the external drive.
4. Use Disk Utility to repartition the internal hard drive.
5. Clone your external drive to the internal drive.
6. Use Startup Disk preferences to designate the internal drive as the startup drive.
7. Reboot the computer.

Free space on my sad hard drive

Hello from Brussels Belgium,
I have a 27" iMac with i7, a 2T hard disk and a 258 ssd.
My ssd now only has 3,2GB / 258GB available and I still have plenty of space on my 2T hard drive.
Here is a print screen of my SSD:
How can I select the files to transfer and is there a tool that optimizes the action to take?
Thanks in advance,
Sami

Look in your documents folder and that is likely where your large files are. Also if you store your iPhotos, iTunes, iMovie libraries on your SSD you can move those to the 2TB internal drive too. Apple explains how to move those in
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
iPhoto: How to move the Library folder to a new location

"Not enough free space" with multiple internal hard drives

I have a Power Mac G4, dual 1.25 Ghz, 2mb Ram running 10.5.8. I have four 500gb internal drives. I've had a number of issues with my internal drives lately. Hopefully someone here can help.
When I "get info" none of the drives display capacity or availability.
When I attempt to copy files from one drive to another I will consistently receive this error:
"The item "filename" cannot be copied because there is not enough free space.
My startup drive should have over 400GB of freespace, so there is plenty of space. This problem also occurs when I connect my Macbook Pro in target mode and attempt to transfer over files.
I was able to boot the G4 into target mode and backup my data. I then installed a fresh copy of OS X 10.5, then did the 10.5.8 combo update (not through software update).
This seems to have fixed the problem as I was copying and organizing my files back and forth between drives quite easily. However, the problem has returned from out of nowhere.
Anybody have ideas what this could possibly be?

Hi iliveontrantor, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Have you emptied the Trash on those drives?
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.
How much free space is on the HD, where has all the space gone?
OmniDiskSweeper is likely the easiest/best, and is now free...
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/

How to erase a early 2008 iMac Hard drive when the screen is dead

My early 2008 iMac's Graphics Module has died for the third and last time. I want to erase the Hard Drive before I offer it up for sale as parts or just re-cycling. But with the Graphics Module dead it will not boot up, therefore no display. So how do I erase my data and restore to a clean OS?

Make sure that your old Mac will boot into disk mode then buy this Thunderbolt to Firewire Adapter

Why when i delete photos and movies do i not get the free space back on my hard drive?

I'm desparately trying to free up hard drive space. I have deleted unwanted photos and videos, emptied iphoto trash, rebooted and emptied regular trash but there is no corresponding increase in available hard drive space! Please help or the Mac gets it!!

If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as "Backups." The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself.

How to Access Space on a large Hard Drive (Solaris 10 Running)/

Good morning everyone,
I have looked back a year on this forum and on hardware forums and I don't see this topic covered.
Recently I installed Solaris 10 on a Sun Blade 150. Not being very smart, I accepted the default settings. The computer only sees about 1/3 of the hard drive. Some mentioned that Zones would let me see and use the rest of the hard drive. And the person mentioned that I could reinstall Solaris 10. I rather not do that, because I have done this three times already to solve other issues and the last effort required a lot of work to be able to see the Internet again.
So what could I do to gain access to the rest of my hard drive?
Thank you,
Fred Strickland

Good afternoon Sparcy and others,
I am not home in front of my Sun Blade 150, but I have been doing some reading. It is not clear to me if the provided information works for a client or home networked computer. For example, I am reading the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems, Chapter 10, page 205 and following. I am unclear if the partitioning command is able to see the entire hard drive or not. And I am unclear if using the command would destroy what I have already placed on the hard drive.
I tried to read and understand the following links, but I have come away more confused than before I started. I am not even sure if Zones will be the final answer.
Help!
Thank you,
Fred
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5097926&messageID=9336522
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5112629&messageID=9382927
http://www.utahsysadmin.com/2008/02/07/adding-a-hard-drive-to-solaris-10/
http://unixadmintalk.com/f4/partition-order-solaris-10-a-23738/
http://www.partnersforever.net/computer_help/viewtopic9193.html
http://www.codefund.net/512/solaris-10-1106-install-how-to-slicepartition-mounted-disks-5120037.shtm
http://www.hccfl.edu/pollock/AUnix1/SolarisPartitioning.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=mllDyJZkGMQC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=solaris+10+partition&source=web&ots=bj7e5UiDZk&sig=xdhAK4o7mFzL_fMaucvAJtmvoPs#PPR22,M1
http://networking.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/sun-server-l/how-to-alter-the-root-partition-size-1678414
http://www.blastwave.org/docs/step-063.html
http://vegdave.wordpress.com/category/partition/

[Solved] Strange free space after adding 2nd hard drive

Hello,
Im pretty new to linux but am learning pretty fast, fast enough that I needed to install a second hard drive.
Every thing went well, got the new drive in and mounted to /home and moved all my old /home to the new drive. After all that I went to delete the old /home on hda resize the / partition to use the rest of the drive.
I used gParted 0.5.0 and booted from their live CD and did the deed. BUT now drive hda (40GB drive) shows that / is taking 36.92GB, when it was originally using about 4GB on the original 7GB / partition.
I ran the disk usage tool and..well
1) It shoes that I'm using 4GB of 40GB
2) Only shows that I have 44GB available when I have 2 40GB Drives installed.
can someone tell me whats going on here?
to recap
Originally the 1 drive was laid out as
/boot - 100MB
swap - 260MB
/ - ~7GB
/home - remainder of drive
then I (wanted to) changed it to
[sda]
/boot - 100MB
SWAP - 260MB
/ - Remainder of drive
[sdb]
/home - 40GB
Thank you for any help.
I have attached the screen shots
Last edited by =OTS=G-Man (2009-12-10 06:02:03)

ill try the fsck right now
heres the output you requested
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 7.3G 3.9G 3.0G 57% /
none 505M 120K 505M 1% /dev
none 505M 0 505M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 99M 12M 83M 12% /boot
/dev/sdb1 38G 93M 38G 1% /home
total 46G 4.0G 42G 9%
thats interesting.
/dev/sda3 is showing its old values almost like something in the partition tables didn't get updated?
Last edited by =OTS=G-Man (2009-12-09 06:19:55)

How can I share my entire iMac hard drive over a network to my Macbook Pro?

I tried setting up a network, and I was able to successfully transfer a couple of files...but some files just wont transfer to my Macbook when I try to transfer them.
What gives? It tells me on certain files that I cannot get them because I dont have correct permissions. When I command-I to get the folder/file info...I'm not even able to change priviledges to "READ & WRITE". "READ" is the only option available.
Can someone please point out what Im missing? I'm trying to transfer a large amount of files from my imac to macbook pro so that I can sell my iMac. It's not letting me transfer all of them.
Thanks in advance everyone!

and how do I log into the other computer as an administrator? the files i want to transfer i just movies, music, documents, etc.
Two methods:
1) Log into the other computer using the username of an administrator on that computer
2) Log into the other computer using the username of the account that holds the movies, music, documents, etc.

How do I re-partition my iMac hard drive?

Originally partitioned my 1TB internal to 250GB/750GB. Now it seems I need more space for my boot partition. I've used Time Machine to BU. So do I have to completely erase, booted from my Snow Leopard install disks, partition like I want to, and then use my Time Machine BU to re-install all my stuff? Will it recognize my new partition and put each BU disk into its' proper place?
Thanks!!!

It depends on which partitions are where, and which ones you want to keep/move/change.
With Disk Utility, you can expand a partition without erasing it if it's not the last one on the drive.
So if the diagram shown by Disk Utility when you select the top line for the drive, then the Partition tab shows partition A on top and B on the bottom, you can delete B and expand A to fill the drive. Then click the plus sign at the bottom to split the expanded A, and set the sizes as needed. Then you'll only have to restore B.
It's not quite the same thing, but there are a couple of screen prints in #6 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), that should give you the general idea.
But if the partitions are arranged the other way, yes, you must completely erase and repartition.
I'd strongly agree with Thomas that you should have a second backup before starting this, just in case something goes wrong. It's unlikely, but does happen on occasion.
I'd also agree that in most cases OSX works much better with OSX, apps, and data in a single partition; Apple's engineers spend lots of time optimizing it to do just that. There are exceptions, of course, but one big pot is usually better than two small ones.
To restore your boot partition, see #14 in the FAQ; to restore a data-only partition, see #15.

How do i move itunes to external hard drive to free up space on my imac

I keep running out of space on my imac (320mb)
I have my movies on a Lacie hard drive.
How do I put itunes on the hard drive?
Thanks

iTunes has many components. The two main ones are the application itself (which is what ones means when ones says "iTunes") and the library which is a set of files and folders. I take it you want to move the iTunes library (you cannot run iTunes the application off a non-boot drive).
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the new location of the library.
My one hesitation regarding the above is it sounds like you already have some things on the external drive and you have not shared with us the details of your setup. You have already modified itunes from its standard behavior and this can sometimes introduce problems.

I have deleted my private folder and do not have enough space to reinstall my operating system. How can i transfer files from my hard drive to an USB drive to free up space when the operating system isn't working. or do i need to erase disk?

i have deleted my private folder and do not have enough space to reinstall my operating system. How can i transfer files from my hard drive to an USB drive to free up space when the operating system isn't working. or do i need to erase disk through disk utilities without erasing data (but will it delete my programs such as photoshop, office, creative suite?

Connect the computer to another Mac and put it in FireWire Target Disk mode, or use the Disk Utility to clone the drive or image specific folders with the USB drive as the target. After you've copied off everything you want, you'll likely need to erase the drive and reinstall the applications.
(69695)

How much free space is necessary on the hard drive?

although the message 'Startup disk is almost full' is coming up, what is the amount of free space required to run 10.4 normally?

773/3219
Hi Brian,
This is not an exact, immutable value, but it is usually understood that Mac OS X needs about 10% to 15% free hard drive space.
Now you most probably can count a minimum of 5 GB, in order to run the (about) 4 GB system (Tiger), regardless of the total size of the HD.
Another useful info:
Depending on your habits and on what you do with your computer, look at the fluctuations of the VM size number in Activity Monitor. It shows quite accurately how much free space the OS needs to "breathe" well.
In a word: 10-15%.
Axl

I have very little space left on the hard drive on my macbook, on my storage report it says "other" is taking up more than two thirds of the space on the hardrive. How can I identify what these files are?

I have very little space left on the hard drive on my macbook, on my storage report it says "other" is taking up more than two thirds of the space on the hardrive. How can I identify what these files are?

Hello,
There is free software you can download that gives you a graphical image of what files are used on your hard drive. http://www.derlien.com/
This may help you clean down your hard drive for more space.
Best of luck

How to free space on an imac hard drive

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