ERROR: Start Up Disk Almost Full ! How do I access/clean up start up disk??

Many thanks!

The following articles have some good tips:
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
Freeing Up Hard Disk Space
Running maintenance routines is critical to keeping the drive clear of unneccesary files:
http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/features/preventmacdisasters/index.php
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html

Similar Messages

"Your Startup disk is almost full" How do you fix this?

Someone please help! More and more frequently my Mac Mini (Mac OS X Version 10.5.8) say that "My startup disk is almost full" So I deleted everything non critical to the maintenance and function of my Mac Mini but still it tells me that my "Start up disk is almost full" Also some important information. I tried installing Boot camp to my mac but halfway though the installation something went wrong. I took out Windows XP (the program i was trying to place on Boot Camp) and a message saying "No bootable device" appears. It appears everytime I try to turn my Mac on unless i hold down the command key during startup which then gives me the option to select "Hard Drive". Also some applications Ex. iTunes will refuse to startup at all and say "iTunes cannot be opened. An unknown error has occurred (13014). I do not know what (13014) is and I cannot find it anywhere. Can someone *PLEASE HELP ME!* I think the problem can be solved by getting the failed Bootcamp program on but I am not totally sure.

OK, so you have one of the first Intel Mac Mini's that came out. I also have one of those models but now has a bad logic board.
What about the other part of the question above?
Do you have 2 Hard Drive icons on your desktop still?
Or just the one?
If you have 2 icons, then you still have 2 partitions...
If you only have the one HD icon, then your HD is only 60 GB in size and you are running out of room as you only have 8.6 GB left which is getting minimal...
You may be running out of HD space as it appears you only have a 60 GB Hard Drive.
You may have a lot of music, movies, photos, etc., that are taking up a lot of space.
If that is the case, I would suggest buying an external Hard Drive to store your music, movies, photos, and other items like that on which will free up your internal drive.
I have an external 500 GB Hard Drive attached to my Mac MIni... This gives me a lot of extra room to grow and I also have it partitioned so I can use Time Machine to backup my internal HD...
If you don't already have some kind of backup, an external drive is one good way to have a backup.

Startup disk almost full--how to change the defualt free space amount?

I know that not too long ago I was able to change the default value that OSX uses to determine if the startup disk is almost full (5 GB?). For the life of me, I can't remember how I did that. I do know that it was a simple process--no terminal, no Unix, just a simple dialog box somewhere.
Can anyone remind me how to make this adjustment?

There is no such parameter built-in to OS X. You must have been using some third-party disk monitoring utility.

ICloud Storage is almost full -- how do I clear my iPhone Camera Roll back-up without losing my photos?

Hi. My iCloud storage is almost full and my iPhone Camera Roll seems to be the main culprit. So...
1. I think that they way to free up my iCloud storage is to go into iCloud management and delete the back-up of the iPhone Camera Roll. Right?
2. If yes, does deleting my iPhone Camera Roll from iCloud back-up delete the photos from my phone entirely?
3. Also, if I have already saved my iPhone photos to my iPhoto Library on my computer (via hard line sync), should I be worried about deleting the iCloud back-up of the iPhone Camera Roll? (In other words, will deleting the back-up on my phone somehow tell my iPhoto to delete the copies of the photo as well?)
Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!!

Here's a tip: Part of what I do is photography, so I normally treat my iPhone as another camera. So, what I do is after I have finished taking some shots/videos with it, I download them to my computer (in my case, via Aperture). For everyone else, on the Mac there is the free Image Capture app, or the iPhoto app (which, if you have the latest version of Lion, it isn't built in there, so you would have to download it from the App Store for a fee).
I have made it a habit to use this method whenever I finish taking pictures at the end of a day (but that's just me). Also, keep in mind that the videos that you take on your iPhone can take up a lot of space very quickly (for instance, one minute of 720p HD video recorded on the iPhone takes up over 300 MB of space!), so you would need to keep that in mind when shooting videos. SO, to answer your questions above:
1) Right.
2) No, because it is only a backup, not the Camera Roll itself.
3) You should not be worried about deleting the iCloud backup of the iPhone Camera Roll. What would happen (in terms of the method) is that you first would download them to iPhoto first, then delete the images from your Camera Roll. This then would free up your iCloud storage space. Lastly, placing them in your iPhoto app will not tell your backup on your phone to delete them. When you delete the images from your camera roll, your "backup" will be smaller in size than it was beforehand.... Hopefully that made sense.

Start up almost full how do i check what's filling it?

can somebody tell me how to figure out what is taking up space on my start up disk? i know there's a utility where it will list everything in oreder by size but i can remember what it is.

http://www.macupdate.com
WhatSize and OmniDiskSweeper (free now) - there are others.
1. dont use your disk until you get it down to 10% free or more, 10GB minimum free space.
2. sometimes you can find entire drive volume under "/Volumes" - use the Go To Folder command in Finder.
3. Clone your drive with SuperDuper to a new drive.
WD Caviar 640 $69 from OWC MacSales
4. Run Disk Warrior or 3rd party

"Startup disk almost full" How do I fix this?

How do handle this? Thank you.

Help here > Freeing Up Hard Disk Space - Mac Guides

My hard driver is apparently full - but it is full of "other" files. I have cleared downloads and removed my music and pictures, but it still thinks it is full - how do I access and delete the files?

I am having real trouble with the mac book air and i dont know what to do. It thinks it is full, i get warning messages every day, but when i check how the storage is being used it is 45.79 GB of "other" and I can't work out where to locate and delete these files. I have removed all my music and pictures, there are nearly no documents on the bloody thing, i have cleared the downloads, I have run a cc cleaner programme but nothing seems to touch this "other" amount. Its so annoying as it is getting to a point where i can't use the computer properly anymore. Do you have any clue what it could be or how i can deal with it?
It did this last year but not as bad, i never solved it then i just removed all my own files but now "other" is taking that space too. On a windows computer you would be able to click through and view what was taking up the space but you can't seem to do that on a mac. could it be a virus that makes the hard driver think it is full?
Any ideas what I can do?

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. 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 the 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.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. 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 asBackups. 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. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Reboot and it should go away.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also 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.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
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.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the built-in 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 to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning.
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 in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Error - start up disk is almost full

Bought this iMac not quite a year ago. I had very few files - some pictures and music mostly. Tried to update ANYTHING and kept receiving "start up disk is almost full". Burned pictures to disc and deleted them. Also, accidentally deleted all music as well. I am still receiving the error message. I called Apple and removing media files was their suggestion as well. I have no idea what to do next - I have no "tech savvy"
Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 (11C74)

Okay, so for some reason your hard disk is literally just about out of space. Your OS needs about 10 - 15 GB of space empty at all times to function properly, so you'll need to take this somewhat seriously since you only have 1 GB left.
Before I forget: have you regularly emptied your trash bin?? If not, see how much is in there - if it is a lot, you might want to take out some of it temporarily and then start deleting. If you have a lot in there, it may choke on trying to delete it all, so do it in smaller batches.
Also, you can download Whatsize:
http://whatsizemac.com/
It will help you figure out what is hogging all your space (and help getting rid of it). Since you have to little space, you may need to get rid of some stuff just to make room for the file you want to download and run.

I have an iMac 5.1 with Mac OSX 10.6.8 and 2 GB memory and an L2 cache of 4 GB. lately I have been receiving error messages of " start up disk almost full; please delete files." is the start up disk the same thing as the hard drive?

I have an iMac 5.1 with Mac OSX 10.6.8 and 2 GB memory and an L2 cache of 4 GB. lately I have been receiving error messages of " start up disk almost full; please delete files." is the start up disk the same thing as the hard drive? I opened the hard drive and from the column on the left of the menu I've selected "search for" and under that " all images" then "all documents" I've deleted a few files from each. Are documents and images that I have deleted from here also deleted from the folders on my desktop?

You should never, EVER let a conputer 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 iMac's Trash icon in the Dock?
If you use iPhoto, iPhoto has 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 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.
Delete any other mail in your Junk folders. Also, look through your Sent Mail to see if there is anything that can be deleted.
Other things you can do to gain space.
Once you have around 15 GBs regained, do a search, download and install OmniDisk Sweeper.
This app will help you locate files that you can move/archive and/or delete from your system.
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.
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
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.
Good Luck!

How do I rectify start up disk almost full. I am new to Macs and struggling

How do I rectify a start up disk almost full message? Never had this until I put a load of photos on to my Mac book air

Hello Kirkcaldy Ronnie,
As Plotinus Veritas said take a backup for your Images on External Hard Disk.
As your Macbook Air Startup disk is full and if you are unable to do anything on your Mac follow the below process to boot your Mac in Safe Mode and then delete some files on your Mac to free up some disk space and then you should be able to boot in Normal Mode.
Steps : > Turn of your Macbook completely by holding the Power On/Off key on your Mac's keyboard > Turn On your Mac again and simultaneously press and hold the Left Shift key on your keyboard and this should take your Macbook in Safe Mode. ( Note : You will see a loading bar at startup when you boot your Mac in safe mode and your Mac will take some time to boot) > Once you login to the User Account on your Mac go ahead an delete as many files as you can from your Mac to free up some space (try to delete and make as much space as you can and keep at least 20% space free of the total amount of your disk space on your Mac Disk) and also empty the Trash of your Mac to completely remove the files from your Mac. > Now you can restart your Mac and let it start in Normal mode and check of you are able to login. If you are able to login in normal mode then try to transfer the data which you do not use regularly on an external hard disk and keep internal space free as much as you can as that will help you to get a better performance of your Mac. Hope this helps you.

How do i solve the 'start up disk almost full' problem?

when i turn on my macbook air, it comes up with a warning message that says 'start up disk almost full' and that i need to clear some space, how do i do this?

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. 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 the 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.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. 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 asBackups. 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. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Reboot and it should go away.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also 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.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
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.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the built-in 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 to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning.
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 in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

How can I find where this came from? - start up disk almost full

Hi, my mac began saying this to me today "Start up disk almost full"
So I began deleting files. I deleted a lot via DiskWave.
But now Diskwave says I have enough space but my mac sure doesn't.
What do I do? What's all that 'other' stuff and where can I find it?
Thanks in advance!

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the Storage display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
Do the same in other applications, such as Aperture, that have an internal Trash feature. Then restart the computer. 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 the 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.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. 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. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also 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. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS or GP 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.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective
Launch the built-in 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 by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything 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 in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

I got my first macbook air about a year ago. awhile ago i started getting these notifications saying "your startup disk is almost full" or "your startup disk is full". i was wondering how to get more space on my startup disk, if that is possible?

i got my first macbook air about a year ago. awhile ago i started getting these notifications saying "your startup disk is almost full" or "your startup disk is full". i was wondering how to get more space on my startup disk, if that is possible?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See 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.

Error messge--"Start up disk is almost full"

Please excuse my ignorance, but how do I fix this problem? It started just recently when I started downloading some decent sized files. Please help! Thanks!!

Hey jodija and welcome to Apple Discussions,
Well if it's saying that your startup disk is almost full it means just that, the disk or partition that the OS is installed on is almost full. Your computer will act really weird if that happens.
You need to get rid of stuff to make room on your start up drive.
richard

Received message that my start up disk is almost full. Where is this located and how do I know what I can delete?

Received a message that my start up disk is almost full. Where do I locate my start up disk / files and how do I know what i can delete from this folder to make more space?

Start up disk is the main, and only, internal disk of your computer.
I hope you know what you saved on it, so you also know what can be removed

ERROR: Start Up Disk Almost Full ! How do I access/clean up start up disk??

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