Computer old and probably going to die soon. Help needed backing up iTunes

Question

My G4 has lost most of it's hard drive space and I'm too stupid to figure out how to clear it up. You guys have tried to help me, but my mind goes numb after I get past 'Emptying the Trash'. I've come to the realization that I must now buy a new Mac. I have an external hard drive that I've backed up most of my stuff on, but I'm a little concerned about my iTunes music. When I drag music onto the external drive, they seem to transfer correctly. However, when I look at the song icon on the external drive, there is a little padlock next to each song. Padlocks frighten me. Does this mean that I'll not be able to open these songs when I try and put them on my new computer? I appreciate any help you can give me. If you are kind enough to try and help, please type your instructions as if you were talking to an infant.

Answer 1

Let's work on the freeing up space issue. This is like looking at your house and saying you need to find about space usage.
Let's start with Disk Inventory. Download the .dmg file, click it to get it to mount (make a pretend hard drive). Then copy the application to somewhere on your computer. Drag the pretend hard drive to the trash and double click on the copy on your computer to start the application.
When DI starts it will look at your computer for drives/volumes. It will show the size of the volume and how much is free. What does it say?
After that, click on a volume (if you have more than one) and have it start analyzing the volume. When it's don't you'll have a map of the drive, and a key to the colors and file types on the right. The types will be organized according to how much space each type is taking up in total. DI tells me on my computer I have 50GB in mp3 type music files, 6.5 GB in mp4 type music files, and so on. Now' there's also a few other things to note. Although most of my music files come under "MP3 audio" at the top, I also have a few GB under "Mp3 Audio File" a little ways down the list, and even "mp3 document" - all mp3 music files. I also have some movies as "AVI". So I can see at a glance that over half my 120 GB drive is being taken up by two file types.
Now if I want/need space I have to look at what's taking up room. I can see I have a lot of mp3, mp3 audio, aac, and related music file types. Itunes itself reports many GB of music so I am not surprised about this. I can select a file type series such as "mp3 audio" and right click or control+click on it to show files in selection list. When I do that a new window appears listing all my mp3 files. I can scroll down the list. When doing so I did notice one file I had in duplicate which was taking up 20 MB of space. I then right clicked on it and sent the duplicate to the trash. Incidentally, I knew there should only be one copy of that file, and getting rid of 20 MB won't free up your computer by a whole lot unless you have 200 files of that kind.
Unless you have a tiny drive we're probably only interested in what's taking up GB of drive space, or at most maybe hundreds of MB. You can spend hours going through 1 MB files and not free significant space (though it is good for general housekeeping). So, keep on selecting a set of the big file types and right click to show in selection list. Then scroll down the selection list which will also be organized according to file size. Look for big files and decide if you want to keep it.
A few things to note.
You're mostly looking for files that will include your name in the "path" column. Disk Inventory lists all files, including many big ones that are system files and should not be touched. I have 5.5 GB as "Documents" but the top 3 are large system files. Below that, however, I notice I have 3 copies of a photograph file which got listed as a document because I don't have the software for opening the file on this computer and the computer decided it was a document. Since I recognize the file name as something I created 2 years ago I know what it is and that the should only be one copy. I can definitely get rid of two copies of the file and free up 260 MB that way.
What you are initially looking for are things you would probably recognize by name and say "Oh, that's where I put that movie!" Or you'll see you have two copies of a huge movie file and that's what's taking up space. Or you'll simply see you have 20 movie files, all of which you want to keep but you'll see that that's where 10 GB of your drive have gone.
After doing this initial browse you may find you have some odd files that you recognize but forgot you have and can now delete. You may also decide you have nothing you can get rid of but at least now you know and you don't have any option but to move files to other places. Or you may decide need a bigger hard drive, or possibly upgrade the whole computer to one with a bigger hard drive too, but at least making that decision. With the advent of digital media many people are simply outgrowing their drives.
In a few cases something may be going wrong and creating either a huge log file. There's something called swap files which will be big but belong there. If you see anything that's bigger than a GB but you don't recognize, ask about it here.