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!
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Do you still have AppleCare on this iMac?
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Use time machine to save both the iMac hard drive data & an external one
Can i program time machine to save both the iMac hard drive data & an external one
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It's better to have two backups, each on seperate hardware of each drive.
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If you drop a drive, or knock it over while it's running, all the data could be lost.
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