I am trying to clean up my iMac hard drive and find a lot of space in 'Deleted Users'...what is this and can I delete that folder?

I am trying to clean up my iMac hard drive and find a lot of space in a folder named 'Deleted Users'...what is this and can I delete it to save space?

If a user account is deleted and the data for that account is not deleted, it is placed there. Yes, you can delete the files there.

Similar Messages

Trying to clean install Mavericks but hard drive partitioned and won't allow

My MacBook Pro 2012 was set up with a partitioned hard drive. Now, as I upgrade from 10.8 to Mavericks, I'd like ot use the Disk Utility to erase the hard drive and then use the interface to install Mavericks, but it won't let me erase the hard drive.
On the left side of the Disk Utility, below the main hard drive, there are two drives noted, with the OS and something else.
Can you suggest how to do something here? I'm stuck halfway.

I'm not sure what you are doing, but if the Recovery HD is still there:
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
      left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
           because it is three times faster than wireless.

IMAC 24" screen went dead. Can I buy a mac compatible monitor and still use the IMAC hard drive?

IMAC 24" screen went dead. Can I buy a mac compatible monitor and still use the IMAC hard drive - which is still working? I took it to the Apple store and they quoted $500+to replace the monitor. No help as usual. Can I buy a MAC compatible monitor ($189) and use it as a primary monitor? Can I set it up if the screen on the IMAC is dead? Any other solutions?

The only negative to not having the original drive will be the work needed to reinstall all the apps and reconfigure to your liking. You will also have to decide whether to stay on Lion (which you should update to 10.7.4, BTW) or bite the bullet and take a leap of faith on Mountain Lion.
In either case, to simplify matters you would do well to concoct a Lion or ML bootable installer on a USB stick. In either case, you need to get the corresponding installer downloaded onto the hard drive and, instead of running it to execute the install, extract the coveted InstallESD.dmg image from which you construct the bootable installer. See here for details: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17782820#17782820 The procedure applies the same to both of the latest cat flavors.

Trying to clean up my iMac. Noticed that while in finder, I click on Applications and in the list I see another folder called applications that is a duplicator of the original folder. Is this truly a copy that can be deleted?

Trying to clean up my iMac. Noticed that while in finder, I click on Applications and in the list I see another folder called applications that is a duplicator of the original folder. Is this truly a copy that can be deleted?

DO NOT remove either folder. DO NOT mess with any OS X system files either. If you have dupliocates check your files in iPhoto, iTunes and your iMovies libraries. Also check your data files, under ALL circumstances stay away from any OS X systems files or you will probably bork your Mac to the point it will not run.

Internal iMac hard drive keeps trying to power down without my consent

How do you stop an internal hard drive from shutting down when you didn't ask it to?
Background:
I use Missing Sync for Palm to sync my Palm handheld with my iMac. My Palm has a SD card slot it in and the sync software came with a program that allows me to mount the
SD card as an external drive on my iMac. From there, I can add podcasts, music or whatever I want directly to the card. I have used this software since March with no problems.
Also, when you put my computer to sleep or shut it down, there is a click and then the internal hard drive shuts down.
Last night, I activated the program to mount the SD card to my iMac and instead of it mounting, the iMac's internal hard drive started trying to shut down.
I have used this program many, many times to mount the SD card to my iMac with absolutely no problem. It was weird this time because I kept hearing that clicking noise. The computer became extremely sluggish. To me, it appeared that the internal hard drive was trying to shut down. After about 4-5 clicks, it succeeded and the computer froze.
Since that time, shortly after you turn the iMac on, you hear that clicking noise trying to power down the hard drive. Sometimes, it just takes a few clicks and the hard drive shuts off. Sometimes the computer will boot all the way up, I can log in and launch a program before it shuts off and the computer freezes. While I can't check the drive with First Aid or Diskwarrior because it shuts off before I can scan it, I assume the data and the drive are ok because I have been able to successfully boot from it and log into my account but shortly after I log in, the hard drive shuts down and the computer is stuck.
Any ideas? Any help would be wonderful!

You are right. It is failing. I took my Mac into the Apple Store and talked with a genius. Although the hard drive would not do what it had at home (typical when you're trying to get something diagnosed) I shut it down so he could hear the noise I do.
Sure enough, he said the noise I heard was the drive read head hitting its start position. When a hard drive shuts down, the drive head moves out of the way since the "hard disk" is actually a thin floppy magnetic disc. The noise I kept hearing was indeed the drive trying to shut down.
Fortunately, I did make a clone of my internal drive to that external drive 6 months ago so I was (eventually) able to copy over all the important files, update the external clone and boot off of it.
Sure enough, tonight, I opened Disk Utility and it said in plain red letters that the drive had reported a hardware failure and should be replaced.
Since my iMac is Summer 2001, the Mac Genius said they no longer carry parts for it so he gave me the name of a local place that would be glad to fix it up. I called them and luck would have it that they were completely out of the internal drives used by my model iMac. So I have to check next week to see if they have received more in yet.
The good news is I can get a slightly larger interal hard drive since I was down to 10GB of a 60GB factory drive. So far, I hear I can go as high as 160GB but the RPM must be lower since my iMac has no fans.
Thanks for your help! As much as I didn't want to believe it, you hit the problem right on.

IMac hard drive getting too full

Hi,
I have a beautiful 2008 27" iMac, which has served me well for years. I still love it and would like to keep using it. It came with a 500 GB hard drive. I have recently purchased and connected a 2 TB "My Passport" external drive. I have been doing back-ups through Time Machine.
Unfortunately, my hard drive has 400 GB of family photos and movie clips, thanks to our awesome iPhones.
Is there a way that I can move all of these pictures and movies to my external drive, while taking them off of my desktop iMac?
I don't want to take the chance of losing my photos. I have a friend who bought extra space on the iCloud; however, she told me once she filled that space, the older pictures and movies started dropping off in a "first in, first out" manner, losing them permanently (which hurts a lot, who wants to lose those precious children's baby pictures).
My computer has a DVD writer built in, but it doesn't seem to recognize blank writable DVD's anymore. I'm assuming it is no longer working. I tried to access it using "Disk Utility" but my computer is not recognizing the "Superdrive" (it's grey'ed out and not selectable).
I just upgraded my iMac to Yosemite, and I have a maxed out RAM of 4 GB. I'm hoping by freeing up space on my computer, I will be able to put many more pictures to come as well as potentially speed it up.
Please help. Any suggestions?
NickG

Here are some general tips to keep your Mac's hard drive trim and slim as possible
You should never, EVER let a computer hard drive get completely full, EVER!
With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.
If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.
Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.
Have you emptied your Mac's Trash icon in the Dock?
If you use iPhoto or Aperture, both have its own trash that needs to be emptied, also.
If you store images in other locations other than iPhoto, then you will have to weed through these to determine what to archive and what to delete.
If you are an iMovie/ Final Cut user, both apps have their own individual Trash location that needs to be emptied, too!
If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive to disc, flash drives or external hard drive, older emails you want to save.
Look through your other Mailboxes and other Mail categories to see If there is other mail you can archive and/or delete.
STAY AWAY FROM DELETING ANY FILES FROM OS X SYSTEM FOLDER!
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive to disc, flash drives, ext. hard drives or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Look in your Applications folder, if you have applications you haven't used in a long time, if the app doesn't have a dedicated uninstaller, then you can simply drag it into the OS X Trash icon. IF the application has an uninstaller app, then use it to completely delete the app from your Mac.
To find other large files, download an app called Omni Disk Sweeper.
http://www.omnigroup.com/more
Also, Find Any File
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
http://www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php
When you install and launch it, let it do its initial automatic tests, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run the maintenance tabs that let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.
Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.
move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
Moving iTunes library
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Moving iPhoto library
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506
Moving iMovie projects folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2289
Good Luck!

I synced with iMac itunes and got many more contacts than I want on the iPhone. How can I delete multiple contacts rather than having to do so one at a time?

I synced my iPhone with itunes and iMac and got many more contacts than I wanted on my iPhone. How can I delete quite a few of them at one time as opposed to deleting one at a time?

iTunes does not handle the import of photos/videos from the iPhone's Camera Roll.
If this is not the computer you sync your iPhone with, you should have been provided a warning message that your iPhone is associated with an iTunes library on another computer and when trying to transfer any iTunes content from a different computer, a warning message is provided indicating that all iTunes content on the iPhone will be erased first.
When connecting an iPhone to iTunes on another computer, none of the options under the various tabs for the iPhone sync preferences with iTunes are selected automatically. This means you had to select Sync Contacts under the Info tab for your iPhone sync preferences with iTunes on your wife's computer.
Assuming you are syncing contacts with a supported address book app on your computer, connect your iPhone to Tunes on your computer and without syncing, under the Info tab for your iPhone sync preferences below the Advanced section, select Contacts for replace info on this iPhone followed by a sync.
For importing photos/videos from the Camera Roll which can be done with a computer that is not used for syncing the iPhone since syncing with iTunes is not involved.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083

Ello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want

Hello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive
Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want
install OS X 10.4.2 on the hard drive, I do not see the disk. What is the problem?

Thanks for the help
I started on the installation CD OS X 10.4.2, I used Disk Utility
to partition the disk according to the document that you have proposed. unfortunately
I have not succeeded. When I partition the disk, even if I called it Macintosh HD, it
does not keep the name and it shows disk0s3 instead. I did an erase on disk.
When I mount the disk it tells me that I must repair. When I tried to repair, I got
the following message:
Volume check failed
The underflying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
I also had a message:
Invalid b-tree node size.
Note: The disc is new, but it has already been formatted on a computer Imac 27 inch 2011 OS X Lion.
I used a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to adjust the formatting.
What to do to fix it?

Slow iMac and Time machine won't recognize iMac hard drive

I have an older iMac (2.16GHz Intel) that is upgraded to OSX10.6.7. Recently it has been running very slow (although it did not seem to correlate with any particular install that I know of). I have looked at the Activity Monitor and cannot find anything that is consuming vast amounts of memory (although I can't say that I really know what I'm looking for exactly, just no high numbers). I did a Safe Boot and it is still really slow there (EXAMPLE of slow is taking several minutes to open a program or taking 27 hours to download my pictures (which only took 13 minutes on my MacBook)). I know my iMac could use more memory (1G), but the slow problem is there even if only running one program. I can't find a particular pattern to it, it just hangs up and then comes back most of the time. It did however start shutting itself down recently. I finally got into disk utility (I've been trying to run disk utility and it usually goes into an eternal spin that I can't even force quit - have to hard boot). So from disk utility I ran verify disk in first aid - it says "the volume Macintosh HD appears to be ok." I"m not sure what else I'm supposed to do in here either. So my first question is Does anyone have any other suggestions for the slowness? Second, in the meantime I'm desperately trying to back up my data on the time machine that I stupidly have never set up as a back up. I can manually put files one at a time over there, but if I try to use it as a time capsule (system preferences, time capsule on) my hard drive does not show up as one of the options???? My external drive and the data that is already on the time capsule show up, but not my iMac hard drive. So my second question is How do I get my time machine to see my hard drive or is there another way to get my files to move over there? I realize I'm in trouble, any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried to provide as much info as possible. Maybe there is something obvious I'm missing.

My own response, or rather an update: I took the computer up to the Genius Bar - my hard drive is bad. They are going to try to rescue my data. For those of you reading this with a similar problem, make an appointment and go to the Apple Store if you can. Mike, my personal "genius" for this encounter, said that stressing the machine when the hard drive is going bad just risks damaging it more. If you potentially have a hardware issue, take it and let them determine what is wrong. They have tools and diagnostics most of us wouldn't know how to use if we read about them here - and they have ways of retrieving data (I hope) that most of us do not have. Please note that disk utility said my hard drive was ok, but the diagnostics they did showed that in fact my hard drive was much less than ok, but it was still "mounting" hence the disk utility reporting it was ok. It is over an hour drive for me to get to the Apple store, and I only wish I had gone sooner.

Please help RE retrieval/transfer of imac hard drive to imac Part 2

Absolutely any assistance would be gratefully appreciated thank you. I am computer illiterate and I need assistance retrieving data from a imac hard drive (rest of computer isn't working) to a newer imac. Previously had received help from the forum and found out I needed an external casing (thank you again to all those that helped), but no shops near me sell them, sales person told me Sata HDD Docking (OTB) would be able to do a similar thing. I really suck with technology, so I humbly ask if any patient persons more intelligent than me could help me with some basic questions to help me retrieve/transfer data. Let me know if I need to give details. Any links to guides or tutorials welcome as well, but I tend to second guess myself and fail at basic terms often, there are probably 6 year olds with better computer skills and knowledge than me, so yeah, pity welcome, help even more so. Oh first question am I still suppose to use Migration Assistent or do I just turn on computer with old HD in dock connected?

Okay, I apologize for throwing you the following curveball - it appears the shop assistent I was talking to may not have been as knowledgeable as I had hoped, because I don't think my imac is compatible with USB 3.0? I tried putting it into the dock but nothing happened - it gave me four options, transfer from another Mac, transfer from a PC, transfer from a Time Machine (and something else) and forth option was not to transfer now.
I attempted to transfer from Mac and Time Machine options, but with both the loading dial spun for 10 mins with each with no change. So I decided to try and set up the computer anyway. The internet set up part came up but at the time I didn't know how to set it up, and now with retrospect I assume I have to set that up before I "register this computer" as no hard drive is showing onmy computer at the moment? Sorry for the sudden and strange switch in problems but now that I have set up the internet - could you or anyone else please tell me how I can register the computer details (or why the hard drive icon is not appearing assuming those things are connected - when I did fill those details out before it told me it couldn't send them now and would have to be done later?)
Sorry for being so clueless - any help appreciated.
I am looking up my imacs specs now to see if it actually can access this dock. (thank you once again)

IMac hard drive failing; external TM will restore but won't then back up

It appears my early 2009 (OS X 10.9.5) hard drive is failing as it crashed 6 months ago, in November and again this week. SMART Utility says it has re-allocated 6 bad sectors and there has been 1 re-allocated event. Each Time I have successfully restored from an external hard drive with TM on it. Prior to the November fail, CCC reported an odd (unknown to me system file) corrupt file but, instead of replacing the file as perhaps I should, I decided to re-boot which it wouldn't do and hence the November TM restore.
However, despite restoring successfully the external TM will no longer make back ups. I have tried repairing it but it is greyed out and Verify says 'unable to complete.' Eventually I did get the greyed out button to work but Repair reported:
Verifying volume “Time Machine”
Checking file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Keys out of order
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNode785919y8
(It should be 13 instead of 4194317)Invalid extent entry
Missing thread record (id = 82)
Incorrect size for file iNode78591999
(It should be 4096 instead of 274877907467)
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78591999)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78591999)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNo$e78592002
(It should be 4194317 instead of 13)
Missing thread record (id = 82)
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file iN/de7x592003
(It should be 4096 instead of 274877907467)
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78592067)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78592067)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 4194322)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 78592004)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 78592004)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Incorrect size for file iNode78592005
(It should be 0 instead of 64)I
nvalid extent entry
Invalid extent entryIncorrect size for file iNode78592006
(It should be 0 instead of 4194304)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Missing thread record (id = 4194322)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
File record has hard link chain flag (id = 82786312)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 82786312)
(It should be 1 instead of 17)
Missing thread record (id = 18)
Incorrect block count for file )Nod%78592009
(It should be 65 instead of 1)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file iNode78592010
(It should be 0 instead of 4194304)
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file iNode78592011
(It should be 0 instead of 274877906944)
Invalid catalog record type
The volume Time Machine could not be verified completely.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Whilst pondering this, the hard drive crashed again this week. Bizarrely I was able to restore from the very same external TM that will not let me do further back ups nor be repaired.
I wonder if there are any further checks I can do to establish if my iMac hard drive is failing? I will then decide whether to replace the hard drive - I see I can fit a WD 6TB with the jumpers set to reduce the speed to 3GB/s - or buy a new iMac.
I wonder also whether there is anything I can do to preserve my TM back ups. I realise I am being guided to re-format this external drive, but can I do that and then add back the actual existing back ups (which I would transfer to another disk before re-formatting) rather than start again from no history newly formatted?

Omdineen wrote:
It boots up to where its just my background and the Finder bar but then crashes, so I can't click anything. Anything from here or am I just screwed?
There are a few remaining options.
If you have another Mac with a FireWire port, try FireWire Target Disk Mode: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
You need a FireWire cable to connect the two Macs. This will allow you to mount your failing HD on a working Mac and copy files that way.
Try Safe Mode - read about it first:
Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components.
Starting up in Safe Mode
This assumes the Finder is crashing due to a third party system extension or optional system component that Safe Mode will prevent from loading. You should still be able to copy files directly to an external device, but file sharing will be disabled.
Lastly boot from the DVD again, repair the disk again, reinstall OS X, and keep your fingers crossed. You're squeezing the last drops of life from the thing.

Imac hard drive replacement

Incredibly my rarely used 2011 Imac Hard Drive is toast. I saw they have a replacement program but even though it is way too soon for a hard drive OF QUALITY to be going out so soon as mine - mine is not included in the replacement program.
Which I have a problem with - how odd it is that they had enough trouble with these computers/hard drives to do a replacement program but mine which did the same thing, expired way too soon isn't covered. I've not had use of the computer for 4 months while I tried to fix the problem so it lasted a little over a year.
Anyway I need to know what to do to try to replace it myself as i haven't the funds to take it to Apple for repair. Plus, Apple Computers and me are history I will never buy another after spending over $1200 for a computer that's nothing more than a very large paperweight right now.
How do I know what size and all that?
I may not be able to afford even that so more than likely this is going to be a very nice looking worthless computer going to the landfill.

I Am leaning more toward Kappy's comments, based on your attitude and comments, but I will ask some questions and add some useful comments as I am in a somewhat charitable mood.
Do you still have AppleCare on this iMac?
From your rather blunt comments I assume no, but have to ask anyhow.
This is why I recommend purchasing and registering for 3- year extended AppleCare.
Because of the nature of the newer iMac designs, hardware failure seems more likely or commonplace occurrence. I believe it's more of a excessive heat related issue than anything else despite what Apple has qualified as "normal" operating temps for these iMac models.
Check out the iFixit home site and search for iMac disassembly or tear/take down. Or search for iMac hard drive replacement on the site.
Another option is for you to purchase an external FireWire 400/800 drive as your new boot drive.
Running your iMac from a FW800 drive will be about as fast as running it from the iMac's Internal drive.
If you can afford it get as large a drive as you can afford.
And just for your info, while hard drives can last for years without issue they will go bad, eventually.
Some drives crash and burn faster than others. Especiallly true of the notebook style drives that Apple installs into the newer design iMac. With hard drives, the question is not if they will fail, but when will they fail.
If you had all of your data backed up to an extra, external drive or optical discs to begin with, you wouldn't be so upset about your internal drive dying as your data still would've been intact on another drive or discs in the first place.
I Always advocate for having some sort of backup strategy for your important data in the event of hardware or hard drive storage failure.

2008 iMac hard drive quit.

My 2008 intel iMac hard drive quit. All I get is a flashing folder with a question mark on it.
Should I send it to Apple for a new hard drive and can they transfer my files onto the new
HD. Or can I do this myself?
thanks.

I know... I can't figure out why it won't. I've even tried multiple keyboards to be sure... It stays on the gray screen longer than usual, and goes to the missing file icon.

Can anyone recommend software to scan iMac hard drive for errors

Hello Apple Community
Can anyone recommend software to scan iMac hard drive for errors/defects/corruption?
I've been having problems with hard drive for months and it finally froze on me so I reformatted and restored from Time Machine.
Everything is fine now but I just have a feeling I will see the same problems occur because I simply restored to the exact moment from where I was having problems (i.e. Finder crashing/permissions issues/Volumes unmounting/Trash not working/Random error messages/Computer crashing when opening or saving PNG).
I read that sometime Disk Utility doesn't always pick up on a defect or corrupt hard drive. The whole time I was having problems Disk Utility said HD was ok.
Is there software that can do a better job of scanning hard drive for errors and let me know if I need to get HD replaced?
Thanks
Brad

I agree with both. Most important though is you backup your data frequently*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
That way if a problem should arise, and it is a result of the hard drive actually dying, you won't accidently kill the hard drive in the process of trying to detect errors.

I upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

Thank you. I followed the faq#14 (using setup wizard from the osx install disk). Everything went just as planned until I woke up this morning and noticed there was no progress on the "transferring documents" meter. It stopped about 1/4 of the way. I can hear the computer working and the bar is somewhat animated like it is advancing but it's not.
Should I cancel and restart or should I wait it out? It already been about 13 hours since I started the process. Do you think it is my time machine or my iMac? Maybe the time machine file is corrupt or something.
Anyway, any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I am trying to clean up my iMac hard drive and find a lot of space in 'Deleted Users'...what is this and can I delete that folder?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for