Disappearing drives

I have a Windows 7 Toshiba Satellite. Early this year I installed Itunes and then uninstalled it. Immediately my dvd-cd writer reader would not show disks in the drive. After a ton of messing around I got audio cds to work again. Still, my cdrom will not play or open a simple picture cd. It shows nothing in the d drive. After probably 30 hours of searching earlier in the year, and another few days now, I have determined that the problem is an Itunes problem that goes back ( according to your forums) to xp. I want to know why Apple has not resolved this. I want a solution. I am very upset that I have had to endure this just because I made one fatal mistake. I believed Apple when they said they had software that would work on a Windows PC. I've read on the forums and also on Microsoft forums that it has something to do with upper and lower registry entries, I've seen detailed solutions posted for these older versions of Windows but nothing for Windows 7. I can't spend ( and don't trust Apple not to mess up my machine further) days trying to figure out which keys to delete or keep, or what commands to type in. What if I mess it up. This is Apple's fault, 100%. I have not had any other issue with anything on this pc... but knocking out my dvd cd rom reader writer is a really big deal, and not acceptable in any way shape or form. Since Apple live support is inaccessible to someone without a new Apple device, or extremely expensive... I need some help. After all this time, does anyone have a certain fix for this...and can anyone tell me why this is STILL going on after all of these years

Oh yeah. Movie Dvd's very rarely play, and then only after trying fifty times, which will eventually wreck the drive completely. Everything worked perfectly until I installed Itunes, but the reason I uninstalled I tunes is because movies from I tunes would not even play correctly on my pc...they stopped, dragged, scrambled, etc. It's literally the worst software experience I have ever had. Well, other than Win 98 as a whole.

Similar Messages

Upgrading itunes and disappearing drives

i could use some help,here is my problem :
after upgrading to any itunes version above 5.0 everything works exept windows and all of my burning programs(roxio--alchool120)do not recognise any burning drive.i have a cdrw internal burner and an external burner.none gets recognised.
when itunes first runs i tells me my config folder for the burning drives is empty please reinstall the drives.
should the external drive get installed again when i plug it in?why the new versions of itunes does this ?
so i use system restore to go back a day and everything works again,but the itunes version goes back too.
i hate ipods the only reason i do this is because of my son
ps:is there any way to get the ipod recognised by a old version of itunes?
dell dimension 8200 Windows XP sp1

ok this is the complete story (long version,will try to make it short)
holyday 2003 : install ipod itunes(ver 5?) everything works fine.
sometimes after don't know when my son updates to itunes (i believe 5.1?)and at the time after upgrading the i tunes worked but upon opening the itunes for the first time,
we had a message like this : itunes cannot find the registry settings to allow me to burn cds,please reinstall cds? .after that none of my burning programs had a default burnerand could not burn with any of it. so all freaked out i system restored to 2 days before. all my recording drives started working again and i told my son not to upgrade itunes anymore.
fast forword to few day ago: old ipod broke(hard drive gone) my son buys new ipod w/video from his friend. install ipod works with old itunes. complains because he cannot tansfer video to ipod with old itunes.swears the itunes is now to 6.0 and all bugs are now worked out.tries to upgrade itunes and bam.itunes don't work quicktime don't work all burning drives disappeared again.so much for all bugs worked out!after reverting to old itunes (i went crazy because itunes did not work ,had to clean out registry and install a stand alone version of quick time)now i have officially given up to upgrading itunes!
the old itunes now works with the new ipod but he has no way to tranfer video to it.
i tank you for your kindness in answering me but my only other question is:
is there any other program that let's you transfer videos(any file for that matter) to ipod?
and why can't mac people make the ipod appear and work like an external drive?
why can't we window users copy and paste a file directly into ipod?
sorry but i'm really ****** off
dell dimension 8200 Windows XP

Disappearing drive

I am in the process of setting up a new mac lab at my school and was struggling with the initial server setup when something strange happened.
Okay so my lab's brand new MacPro (what is to be the server) came with TWO 1GB HD installed. I had set up the computer and and was working off of one of the HD and just called the second drive backup HD (I had only set it to be my backup drive for time machine) and left it alone.
I now little to nothing about networking/servers, but I had installed the server software on the main drive and have been struggling to figure out how to set it up appropriately. After watching some tutorial videos from apple I decided I'd try and start fresh by reinstalling the server software and letting it walk me through the set up steps. So I inserted the server software disk and restarted to reinstall.
Now I'm pretty sure that they only option that I had as an install location was the "backup HD" I thought that was a bit strange, but didn't think to long about it (as my brain was already a little fried). I figured I try installing it on the backup HD and if I could get it working, then I'd just switch the original HD to be the back up later.
I ran the installer and then booted up. As I am trying to walk through the server set up steps I am noticing that the original HD is no longer mounted on the desktop, nor does it even seem to be listed in the hardware info screen... So now I am really getting perplexed. I decided to give up on the server set up for now.
I went through the sys pref to select the original startup disk as my boot disk, but alas its not there either. Next I try rebooting to see if it will reappear...nope. So I tried re-installing osx from the system discs (1/2 later) still only one drive is recognized.
Got any insight? Could the drive cable have come loose inside...I am totally stumped.
Thanks.

What brand are the drives? I had purchased two WD 1TB Green drives and only one is still working after three months. The bad one started to disappear every once in a while. After a few weeks it just disappeared and never showed up again. I replaced it with a regular WD 1TB dive and I've had no problems since.
This was my problem but yours could be something different.

WD Caviar Green 2TB - disappearing drive

Hi all,
I have installed a 2TB WD drive for use as a time machine drive. (expanding from 1TB external)
Sometimes the disk displays odd characteristics, such as:
• Overnight (last night for example) TM didn't do any further backups after 7.43pm. This caused system preferences to crash and of course TM wasn't accessible. And Finder also hung. So I restarted...
• But because of whatever reason the computer wouldn't restart, so now I had to do a hard restart, but the WD drive wouldn't show up.
• I shut down, remove the drive from its bay (bay 2), put it back in, restart and all is well again.
*Now, is this a low power/sleep issue?* It would seem that the hard restart would remove that question.
*Is it a jumper settings issue?* Removing the drive and putting it back in would seem to eliminate that issue. (for the record, they are at OPT1 enabled, as that seemed to work best at the time.)
Does anyone know what the best way forward is? It would seem to me that neither the drive or the Mac are broken (there was a 500gb WD in that bay before with no problems) and when the drive is mounted - it seems to work fine, until I'm not around then there is a problem.
I would prefer to allow my drives to sleep when unused, but is switching that preference off the only option?
Thanks,
Aaron

Why or what jumper setting is that for? default as is with none.
Removing and installing again isn't going to change anything.
It comes with SSC and OPT1 Disabled. Leave it that way.
And I would not allow drives to spin down.
I am also not a big fan if at all of TimeMachine (think after 3 yrs but no) so I favor SuperDuper, CCC and Tri-Backup 5.
Is it a jumper settings issue? Removing the drive and putting it back in would seem to eliminate that issue. (for the record, they are at OPT1 enabled, as that seemed to work best at the time.)
10.5.6 and above should be fine. Even with the newest version (with 64MB cache).
Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=773
http://support.wdc.com/product/kb.asp?groupid=608
What I do with any new WD drive is run it through WD Lifeguard (in Windows 7) and do full extended test, full format with zero.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608
There have been issues with 2TB drives in Mac Pro 1,1 (often as last in bay #4 it seemed).
How about mounting in external FW400?

What to do? (Spinning Curser, Failing Finder, Disappearing Drive)

I loaded the 10.4.7 update without running the disk utility beforehand. I know...I know....BIG MISTAKE.
I've had the problem of the finder working for about two minutes and then spinning for eternity afterwards. I ran the disk utility from the dvd. It found a problem with the master hard drive and fixed it.
However, I still have the problem with the finder. Everything locks up within 2 minutes. In addition, sometimes my partitioned 400 GB internal drive will mount on the desktop and sometimes it won't.
I have done just about everything (emptied user and system cache & preferences, reloaded Tiger-without zeroing out the data, zapped the PRAM, started up in safe mode to use the disk utility and started up from the cdrom to use disk utility), but everything still locks up. When I have had enough time to run the disk utility, it verifies the master hard drive (with OS on it) and has no priviledge repairs to make.
Before I try zeroing out all the data on the 80 GB master drive, I would like to get some opinions.
Here's my set up: Dual 800 MHz G4. Master-80 GB Slave1-160 GB Slave2-400GB. PCI Card to allow me to use more than 120 GB on the 160 & 400 GB drives. Several external drives--all now unplugged and off. New Dual Layered Internal Superdrive. 512 MB and 256MB of memory (I think these are the right numbers, but close enough.)
I have read the posts and seen several of my problems separately, but not all together. I have tried the suggestions offered, but am still having major problems.
PLEASE HELP!!!!

You're welcome. Sorry about the drive.
For recovery your best bet is Prosoft Data Rescue. There is a free trial to see if it can recover what you need.
Also, a service that has been recommended but I cannot personally endorse is DriveSavers.
-mj
[email protected]

Internal RAID Drives Disappeared from Desktop & Finder

A few days ago, one of my two internal mirrored RAID sets no longer showed on the desktop or in the Finder Sidebar. A day later, the other internal RAID set disappeared from desktop and sidebar. The two remaining internal non-RAID drives show up as do two external drives. All internal and external hard drives still show under Disk Utility and Photoshop Bridge CS3.
I checked Finder Preferences and boxes are checked to show internal and external drives on the desktop and sidebar. I looked at the drive detail under Disk Utility and nothing looks wrong with the two RAID sets ON-LINE. I unmounted one RAID set and re-mounted without any change. I tried unchecking the two preference boxes to not show the drives and rebooted, rechecking the boxes and rebooting and nothing changed on the desktop or sidebar.
Does anyone have any suggestions to resolve this?

Well our invisible drives problem is resolved but it's not the solution that I'd hoped for.
We visited the Genius Bar at a local Apple store and they denied any knowledge of problems with invisible drives in Macs and discounted my reports from Mac forums.
I went home and ordered a new 1tb Seagate drive. When it arrived, I installed it in bay 2, copied each invisible drive to the new drive one-at-a-time, broke my two sets of internal mirrored drives, erased all the affected drives and reloaded them. Now all drives are visible on the Desktop and Finder again.
I'm hoping that the disappearing drive problem doesn't surface again but view this as an unresolved Apple issue. Now I can look at other mass storage options for future growth.

Can't create space on drive

For some reason, no matted how many files I trash, I can not get any more space on my drive. I have a 150GB drive. By looking at a Finder window at the root, there are six folders. Applications, Applications (OS 9), Library, System, System Folder (OS 9) and Users. The total of all of these folder equals about 37GB. That should leave me with 113 or so GB. But instead I only have 747MB available on my drive. What gives? My drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I hit the Erase Free Space button in Disk Utility but that did nothing. Anyone have any suggestions?
Gary
Message was edited by: Gary Looft

There are programs that will show you space occupied by each folder, e.g., Folderlister, WhatSize. Alternatively you could go to the main hard drive level, then in the folder view options select calculate all. This will show you the size of each folder.
Here's a list of sites to read:
Where did my disk space go?
[http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243]
WhatSize
[http://www.derlien.com>
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
[http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html]
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
[http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html]
Increase HD Free Space
[http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd free-space-laptop.html]
[How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html

Transfering a few TV shows to External drive?

Hi,
I have a MacBookPro which is about 2 1/2 years old. I need to buy some TV shows from iTunes but I only have about 10 GB left in my laptop. I want to keep my iTunes in my laptop but keep some of my old TV shows that I bought from iTunes and don't want to watch for a while in the external drive. Can I do that? Is there a way to just drag the shows to external drive?
I really appreciate the help. I will buy a new MacBPro but can't afford for another year

lily00 wrote:
I only have about 10 GB left in my laptop.
yes, you urgently need to make room on your startup disk ! check this:
Your Mac needs adequate hard drive space to operate normally. How full can a drive be before it's too full? There is no hard and fast rule that says “X” amount or “%” of free drive space is needed. A low amount of RAM requires more drive space for Virtual Memory’s swap files.
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space are discussed in this link
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html
Here’s some general guidelines for minimum hard drive free space:
1. As a general rule, your available space should be 5GB as an absolute minimum as it generally requires that much free space to perform an Archive and Install of Mac OS X and still preserve some free space for VM swap files.
2. Some say that your hard drive should have at least 5% of it's capacity available for use. Still others say 10% to 15%. If you routinely process complex graphics and videos, even more space is required.
With your 19.7GB of free space, you should be OK. Usually it's best to not state a percentage, but state an amount of free space. There's a big difference in having 10% free space (20GB) on a 200GB hard drive compared 10% (4GB) to a 40GB hard drive.
Look at these links about freeing up more space.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
I want to keep my iTunes in my laptop but keep some of my old TV shows that I bought from iTunes and don't want to watch for a while in the external drive. Can I do that?
yes. try this user tip:
In iTunes 9.
iTunes prefs -> Advanced.
Set the iTunes media folder location to the external.
Then select the movie files (or any files in iTunes) and right click Consolidate.
This will copy only the movies to the external location.
After it finishes, iTunes prefs -> Advanced and set the iTunes media folder location back to the internal. This will tell iTunes to use the internal drive for new files.
You can then delete the movies from \Music\iTunes\ on the internal to free up space.
To copy a movie back to the internal, simply right click - Consolidate (since you pointed iTunes back to the internal).
just edit these instructions to meet your needs.
JGG
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)

Freeing up hard drive space

I am trying to figure out how to free up space on the mac hard drive. If my iTunes library is backed up to an external hard drive, can I delete the library from the mac hard drive? How would I re-map iTunes so it launches from the external drive?
Next question: I store all of my photos on 2 external drives, but does the mac store a copy of the photos as I am editing them in Photoshop? Would love to understand how to clean this up, as I am down to less than 1GB of space on the mac.

How would I re-map iTunes so it launches from the external drive?
Hold down the option key while starting iTunes. Select the different library. Note, your external drive will have to be on when starting itunes in the future or else it will make an empty library on your drive.
Next question: I store all of my photos on 2 external drives, but does the mac store a copy of the photos as I am editing them in Photoshop? Would love to understand how to clean this up, as I am down to less than 1GB of space on the mac.
I don't use Photoshop but it isn't unusual for applications to make temporary buffers when editing files. I don't know if you can or would want to disable that.
1GB is seriously low. You should probably have 15+ GB free.
[Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space|http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html]
*Reading on hard drive space issues*
[Erasing free space results in erroneous full disk warning|http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=459623&seqNum=9]
[Where did my disk space go?|http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243 ]
[X-Lab: Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk|http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html]
[Amazing Disappearing Drive Space|http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html]
[Increase HD Free Space|http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd free-space-laptop.html]
[How to free up my disk space|http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html]
[Baby Boomer's Apple Discussions post|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10189607#10189607]
*Utilities for investigating drive space usage*
[Disk Inventory (free)|http://www.derlien.com>
[OmniDiskSweeper (free)|http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download>
[WhatSize|http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize> (now shareware and only useful on <20GB drives until you buy it)
[GrandPerspective|http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net>

Hard drive saying its full when it isn't

I'm having a problem where my hard drive is saying its almost full 54.31 used of 55.77 available which is making it run really slow. I recently cleared all my itunes onto an external hard drive to solve this problem and it did, meaning I had about 20 GB used. However it seems to have gone back up to 54 and I don't understand how? I run carbon copy cloner to mirror my hard drive and on the external it says only 20GB used?
I think another reason it is running slow is that my 1.5 GB RAM doesn't seem to be working. It was showing up as just 512, i opened it up, swapped the 512 card with the 1 GB card and now it says there is 1 GB only. I think the lower slot isn't working because I did an apple hardware test and it said so. It told me 'post/0/2048SO DIMMM0 / J25 lower. Is this a hardware problem or something wrong with the RAM? I am assuming the former because I managed to swap them around successfully. Does it need to be fixed professionally or is there anything else I can do? Can I use a 2GB card in one slot or doesn't this work?
Any help appreciate, my MAc isn't very happy at the moment!

After you moved the iTunes files to the external hard drive, did you trash the iTunes files on your internal drive?
Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Where Did My Disk Space Go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/770243/site_id/ 1
 Cheers, Tom

Disappearing disk space--do I have a virus??

My disk space seems to be disappearing like crazy.... I have a 100GB unformatted (93.04 GB formatted according to Finder) system HDD, and I examined the size of every subfolder in "Macintosh HD" and came up with this:
Users: 17.39 GB
Applications: 3.66 GB
System: 1.66 GB
Library: 5.82 GB
System Folder: 156.5 MB
Applications (Mac OS 9): 170.2 MB
Backups: 903 MB
=About 30 GB (not that it makes that much difference, but assuming 1000 MB=1 GB).
There is NO WAY that even comes close to 93 GB. Even accounting for slack space, that doesn't make sense. (I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of HFS+). And to my knowledge this system has no hidden partitions on it. My trash is also completely empty, yet Finder tells me I have ZERO KB of space. Any thoughts what could account for all that missing space and how I might go about recovering it???

You don't have a virus. Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Are you using File Vault?
 Cheers, Tom

Start up drive full

I recently ran into the above error when trying to do a software update. I went out and purchased a 40 Gb drive to use as a slave. I have been moving items to the slave drive to free up space and that has only given me 430.4 Mb free space on the start up. I was advised there is an article here on moving the Itunes library to the slave drive with out messing up the Iphone sync. Also if there is anything about what files necessary for the start up disk and what can me moved to the slave? Could someone direct me to this info? Thank you in advance

Also look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
 Cheers, Tom

What is taking up hard drive space?

hello.
I have a power mac (pre intel) quad core desktop running 10.5.8.
I have noticed it being very sluggish lately.
From taking 5 minutes to boot up, to browsers taking longer to launch(with the color wheel spinning longer until the browser is fully ready), to inputing text into fields in a browser window(the text gets entered a second or two after typing). Even when I open a finder window, the icons for every file, as well as the size listing of each file/folder will take like 10 seconds to start loading one at a time. I never noticed that before.
So I opened disk utility, and noticed that I have filled up 160GB out of the 233GB that this hard drive has. That seemed like a really high number.
So I added up the total size of the home folders in all 4 users on this computer, and they add up to 27GB. The system folder is 4 gigs, and the main Library folder at the top level is 51 gigs. I don't think there is anything left. That adds up to 82GBs. Where is the other 78GBs coming from?
I know I'm missing something, but I can't figure out what.
Even still, I don't know that this is the reason for my computer to act sluggish, but now I'm curious how I'm filling up so much hard drive space.
Any thoughts on finding this info out, and/or fixing the sluggish issue?
Thanks!!

On the space issue, has everybody emptied trash? You each have your own and if somebody doesn't... There's varous utilities for scanning drives for space usage. Some are free, others not. I think Omnidisksweeper is free. Search the Discussions for this subject and the others will probably be mentioned.
A few GB are kind of hidden and not accounted for, I think. Some cache files, etc.
160? I mean only 160? That's peanuts by modern standards.
Slow computer. Might start by verifying hard drive with Disk Utility. Installing and using Applejack would be good too. Are you sure everybody is logged out and didn't leave a ton of applications running in their account?
I'm too lazy to remove the old formatting from my boilerplate post on this:
*Quick checks*
Have you emptied the Trash?
*Reading on hard drive space issues*
[Erasing free space results in erroneous full disk warning|http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=459623&seqNum=9]
[Where did my disk space go?|http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243]
[X-Lab: Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk|http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html]
[Amazing Disappearing Drive Space|http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html]
[Increase HD Free Space|http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd free-space-laptop.html]
[How to free up my disk space|http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html]
[Baby Boomer's Apple Discussions post|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10189607#10189607]
*Utilities for investigating drive space usage*
[Disk Inventory (free)|http://www.derlien.com/]
[OmniDiskSweeper (free)|http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/]
[WhatSize|http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/] (now shareware and only useful on <20GB drives until you buy it)
[GrandPerspective|http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/]

Need help finding lost hard drive space on my Power Mac G4

I have a Power Mac G4 that is just about out of hard drive space. Why? I have no idea. I only have about 7 MB left of the 512 MB that came on the machine. I have backed up most pictures, documents, etc... to an external hard drive and have barely anything left on the desk top. Does anyone know what might be working 'behind the scenes' to eat up hard drive space or what I can do to gain any back? I'm not a huge 'techie' so any advice past 'empty the trash' would probably be helpful.
Thanks very much for anything you can do for me.
Tony

I believe you mean GB instead of MB when referring to hard drive size/space.
Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Where Did My Disk Space Go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/770243/site_id/ 1
 Cheers, Tom

How to get rid of stuff from the hard drive

Our family iMac, with a 500GB hard drive, has only 5 GB of space left. Is there a quick, efficient way to get rid of duplicate stuff, large files, unused programs that just take up space?

take a look @ [WhatSize|http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize>.
also, here's some reads to peruse:
Your Mac needs adequate hard drive space to operate normally. How full can a drive be before it's too full? There is no hard and fast rule that says “X” amount or “%” of free drive space is needed. A low amount of RAM requires more drive space for Virtual Memory’s swap files.
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space are discussed in this link
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html
Here’s some general guidelines for minimum hard drive free space:
1. As a general rule, your available space should be 5GB as an absolute minimum as it generally requires that much free space to perform an Archive and Install of Mac OS X and still preserve some free space for VM swap files.
2. Some say that your hard drive should have at least 5% of it's capacity available for use. Still others say 10% to 15%. If you routinely process complex graphics and videos, even more space is required.
Look at these links about freeing up more space.
Where did my disk space go?
_*http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243*_
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ _*http://www.derlien.com/*_
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
_*http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html*_
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
_*http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html*_
Increase HD Free Space
_*http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html*_
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
JGG

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