15% of free space on startup disc is preferred. Fact or Myth.

I see this all the time. Some users say yes, others say no. Can I get a confirmed answer as to which is correct? Thanks for any anticipated input from either school of thought.

shldr2thewheel,
I do not think that there is one pat answer to your question, but "Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space", by Dr. Smoke explains how to determine if your system is at risk. His analysis determines that 10GB free space should be considered the absolute minimum.

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Trouble downloading photos from iPhone to iMac. Error message says I need to free up space on Startup Disc

After clicking "Download," the iMac seems to download photos from iPhone. Eventually, I get message that I need to free up space on Startup Disc by deleting files. What to do?

You are in a very dangerous situation and you need to fix it now.
OS X needs about 10 gigs of hard drive space for normal OS operations - things like virtual memory, temporary files and so on.
Without this space your Mac will slow down as the OS hunts for space on the disk, files will be fragmented, also slowing things down, apps will crash and the risk of data corruption - that is damage to your files, photos, music - increases exponentially.
Your first priority is to make more space on that HD. Nothing else can be done until you do.
Purchase an external HD and move your Photos and Music to it. Both iPhoto and iTunes can run perfectly well with the Library on an external disk.

"Minimal Allowable Free Space on Scratch Discs"

I have accidently deleted the number that is next to "Minimal Allowable Free Space on Scratch Disc" in the "System Settings" Box. Can anyone tell me what the default # is? I think it is around 12 thousand and something.
Thanks in advance

10% of your total disk space is a good rule of thumb.
Any less than that and OSX is more likely to run into problems.
Say you have a 250gig harddisk, then you should leave 25gig free. (But I have to be honest, I have found myself using up to only 10gig left, and had no problems.)

Free space for startup disk

How much free space is recommended for the startup disk? I have a lot of movies and TV shows, I have them on ICloud.
Thx, Macmanuserid

If it's a boot hard drive and your interested in maintaining the computers maximum read/write performance, no more than the first 50% of the drive filled.
Meaning no files or anything on the second 50% of the boot hard drive, this can be done by creating a second partition in Disk Uitlity, provided there is ample room. If there isn't, then there is something there already and you have to reduce items so only 50% of the boot hard drive is filled, then do a defrag via my method here to shift the data up to the first 50% of the boot hard drive.
BootCamp: "This disc can not be partitioned/impossible to move files."
How to safely defrag a Mac's hard drive
You can still get decent performance from a boot hard drive until it's about 80% filled, however in later OS X versions there are a lot of large hidden caches like versions, timemachine local backups (laptops) and such that will unfortunatly push your newly created or transferred files to the more slower parts of the boot hard drive.
If you have a boot SSD then don't let it get more than 80% filled.
However other things can make a computer slow,
Why is my computer slow?

Making more space on startup disc

How do I make more space on the startup disc?

You'll have to get a external drive and move some of your file over there.
Usually video files are the biggest hogs of drive space.
This is free program to help you visualize where the space has gone, download it after you have freed some space first moving a big file or something to the external drive.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/#download
When you hook up a external drive, a backup program called TimeMachine is going to start to ask you to make it a TM drive for backup, this is just a copy of your present contents, it's NOT a storage drive.
TM drives just copy whats on your startup drive, keeps deleted stuff for some time and later deletes it, so it's not there pernamently, it lets you recover files you deleted or older versions.
You should make a TM drive, and then use another drive to use as extra storage space by moving files there, then the TM drive updates and eventually those files are removed from TM, depending how much space is on it.
Files on the storage drive are not removed until you remove them, or something happens to the drive (have two copies of your data at all times)
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

HT3680 making space on startup disc

How do I clean up my Startup disc to make more space? If you know, please explain really simply. Thanks.

Use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space.

How do i see what is using space on startup disc

I am trying to see how much space is being used on my computer in the different areas; documents, photos, videos, etc. To see what i can delete to free space. Is there some way to check this?

GrandPrespective is a free utility that is well regarded. It gives you a visual representation of disk use.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/19515/grandperspective
Daisydisk is a shareware application that has similar functionality.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30689/daisydisk
You can also free up space by deleting unused binaries from your applications. XSlimmer does this for you.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23200/xslimmer
You can also compress your data folder and make better use of the space you have. Clusters does this for you.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33585/clusters

"Running Low on free space in Startup disk"?

I am trying to burn a DVD and after so long the message comes up saying i am running low on free space. I have checked my internal drive and amazed at what is being used.
Capacity: 55.77GB
Available: 1.44GB
54.36 Used on Disk.
Can anyone tell me how i can make free space and delete whatever is using all my memory? Its not being used in any of my programmes that i use, i.e. itunes, imovie etc.
Any help would be great. Thank you.
IBook G4, Powerbook 6.3 Mac OS Extended

First of all, it is dangerous to have that little free space. OS X needs some breathing room (about 5-10% of the HDD free).
The files could be anything, really. Music and Videos, including Garageband loops take up a ton of space. I would snag an external firewire drive and put some stuff on there.
Your problem is hard drive space, not memory, FYI. If you are running Tiger (10.4.x). Google and download "Tiger Cache Cleaner" (there is also a Panther version). Running it may free up some space, as will running Monolingual, which strips other languages from your machine.
Another thing you can check is your printer database. If you go to Macintosh HD--> Library--> Printers, you can delete any printer driveers you don't need. (Be careful with this, as it requires your admin. password...)
iSMH
Ps- the OS also takes up some space, as do 3-rd party applications.
Let me know how it goes.

My macbook pro 10.6.8 don't have enough space in startup disc to install new software. how to fix that?

I can't install newer itune software 'cause it says my macbook pro doesn't have enough disc space. How I can manage more space there? Tried to emty trash can and deleted many pictures from iphoto.
Please help!

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

Erase free space filled my free space..help !

I used DU erase free space on 'zero data option'
I had 50/50% free /used space on 80 Gb int HD
after that I had no free space ...
I started from OSX disc, ran DU, repair disk, which fixed 2 issues but
left 'Invalid leaf record' 'should be 13 not 2001'
Last line ... '1 HFS volumne repaired'
'1 volumne could not be repaired'
This HD was NOT partioned..
I guess DU wrote in my free space but didn't record that fact correctly ?
It's running but slow slow
Any idea what to do ?
Thanks

Do you have a full backup of your system and data? If not back up as much as you can, if you can. After that that, I would stop using it.
You need to free up space on your hard drive to allow it run properly. Then it may be able to be repaired. But I wouldn't want to try without knowing how backed up you are, or not.
Let us know.
-mj
[email protected]

HT201364 When I try to download this I get a message that says I haven't got sufficient space on my startup disk. I have checked my available space on the disc and I have only 3GB free out of 500. I have hardly anything on my mac - how can this be?

When I try to download this I get a message that says I haven't got sufficient space on my startup disk. I have checked my available space on the disc and I have only 3GB free out of 500. I have hardly anything on my mac - how can this be?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion/Mountain Lion's Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

My start up disc is full i have a macbook air, i back everuthing up with time capsule and have movies all my music libraries and photos onto that too so as i have free space, but my max still says my startup disc is full with "other"

my start up disc is full i have a macbook air, i back everuthing up with time capsule and have movies all my music libraries and photos onto that too so as i have free space, but my max still says my startup disc is full with "other"

First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the available 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.
To locate large files, you can use Spotlight as described here. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
You can also use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.
Proceed further only if the problem hasn't been solved.
ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual.
Triple-click the line of text below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

I have removed all movies to Seagate portable drive to free up space on the startup disc and can confirm all can not be found on my computer, however it still shows as being there when i check storage ???

I have removed all movies to Seagate portable drive to free up space on the startup disc and can confirm they are no longer on my computer after doing a search, i trashed them and then emptied the trash, however they still show as being there when i check storage on the startup disc???????, can anyone advise what is happening here?

Try reindexing spotlight on the Startup drive.
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support

HT3680 I get the message 'your startup disc us full' at random time point I'm trying to import photos to iPhoto and get'iPhoto cannot import your photos because there is not enough free space on the volume containing your iPhoto library'.

I get the message 'your startup disc us full' at random time points. I'm trying to import photos to iPhoto and get'iPhoto cannot import your photos because there is not enough free space on the volume containing your iPhoto library'. This is a new Macbook Pro and all my files were transferred from my old Macbook.

What size internal drive do you have and how much of it is used?

My HD is almost full. I need to add space. Can I use an external HD to continue using my startup disc as it is?

My HD is almost full. I need to add space. Can I use an external HD to continue using my startup disc as it is?
I create music and have run out of space. the message says 'your startup disc is almost full', and i just thought maybe buying an external hard drive and using it as the startup disc or whatever would do the trick. Does anyone know? Thanks!

External hard drives are relatively inexpensive...see some of those on OWC, www.macsales.com
You can use a large external drive to provide additional space by simply saving material to that volume instead of the startup disk. You can also partition the external drive to use part for Time Machine backups, and another partition for extended space. Or a third partition for a clone of the boot system made by Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, both free downloads, so should the internal drive have problems you could always boot from the external partition.
All of that can be done from Disk Utility.
Keep in mind that Mac OS X gets very unhappy when there is less than 15% of the startup disk space free.

15% of free space on startup disc is preferred. Fact or Myth.

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