Cleaning up my macbookPro - HELP

Question

I bought two external hard drives, one for Time Machine and one portable.  I've got a ton of pictures and video on my macbook and it can't run some software because there isn't enough space left.  I'm not sure how to delete and be confident that the files are saved.
big chicken in NC

Answer 1

From what I understand, TimeMachine is a rotating backup of what's on your boot drive, not a excess storage drive.
So that would mean you would use the portable drive as extra storage, and since portable drives are highly vulnerable to loss, shock and are port powered (instead of it's on power) may not work correctly if it's drawing too much power.
Since powered drives are getting less expensive all the time, I suggest you get three, HFS+ journed formatting them (Disk Utility) one to make a Carbon Copy Clone of your entire OS X boot partition (it's hold the option key bootable) disconnect that and then the second to offload the video files and other huge space takers and the third to duplicate the second drive as backup.
Test the second external drive with your extra files for awhile to make sure everything works, then delete those extra files off your internal boot drive to free up space.
I know this sounds crazy, but you need to maintain two copies of your data at all times on two separate pieces of hardware in case one fails mechanically. Since your removing a large amount of data from your boot drive, you need one drive to hold that and then another for backup.
So you got two backup systems going, one for your boot drive configuration and another for your external extra storage. The boot drive has TimeMachine and a bootable clone (TM is not bootable), the external video drive has it's own backup.
When you update the clone later after you have removed files and made your new changes to the boot drive, you want it to reflect what's currently on your boot drive so in case you need to option boot from the clone and clone it back onto your internal boot drive you can. This means the extra files you've cloned the first time (and moved to the external drive) won't be on the clone as they are now on the second external drive which itself is backed up to the third external drive.
Now the drives I recommend should use as many interfaces as possible, namely eSATA, Firewire 800/400, USB 3/2.  Mac's come with USB 2 which is the slowest interface to transfer and watch video from a external drive, may result in glichy playback. So Firewire 800 or eSATA preferred (requires a expresscard), but combination port drives cost more money as USB 3/2 are more common and less expensive catering to the larger PC market.
Mac's don't have USB 3 yet, opting to push the expensive Thunderbolt instead, of course PC's don't have this and likely never will, like they never really adopted Firewire or eSATA, opting for USB 3/2 instead.
So lay out your plans well on paper first, maintain a checklist and label/date each drive so you know what it is and what it's for so you don't lose data and maintan a fast interface.
Also before you use any drive, make sure to Disk Utility format HFS+ journaled (for Mac use only) with Security option > Zero all data. Yes it takes time, but writing zero's and mapping off bad sectors results in a more reliable drive and less need for Disk Warrior and other rescue software as each bit is checked before data is laid on the sectors. Since video takes up a large space for one file, it's more prone to failing due to bad sectors that smaller files.
If you need to transfer data with a PC, I would use the portable drive and format that FAT/MSDOS as both PC's and Mac's can read that. If you have larger than 4GB files, then your going to need to format it exFAT instead. Always check if the drive works with a PC before placing your only copy of data on the drive, sometimes the PC has to format it exFAT or FAT first (or has malware) and that would/could/  contaminate/erase your data.