Free up space on Hard drive

Hi- I'm using 10.4.8 on my new MacBook and was wondering if anyone could tell me if they know what I can free up on the Hard drive to create more disk space? It seems to me that there are quite a few printer files and languages and probably a few other that I'm not sure if I need-
Can anyone help?
Thanks in advance,
macbook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

When I received my BlackBook, the first thing I did was doa clean install of the OS so I could leave all the stuff off that I knew I would ever use. I assume that you do not want to do that now, so you can use a program called Monolingual to remove the languages. You can simple delete the printer drivers that you will not need also.
Go through the "Applications" folder and you will surely find things that you do not need. I took of the Office Test Drive, Quicken, the games, and quite a few others. Garage Band and the sample loops were a huge disk hog, so out they went.

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Trying to free up space on hard drive, with an external hard drive, but don't want to lose the files!

So I am really stressed out right now.
I have a macbook pro, with a 750 gb hard drive in it. My internal hard drive filled up a while back so I bought a 3TB external hard drive. I backed up my files onto my external a while ago, but I don't really remember how... There is a folder on my hard drive that is called " wd smartware.swstor" , and inside that folder is about 1.7 TB of files (when I click 'get info')... So I'm guessing that is where all my stuff is being backed up. But I also moved files from my computer onto that hard drive, like pictures and videos, that I wanted to delete off my internal... So I may have duplicates?
But my 3TB hard drive is almost full, it has 400GB free on it. And my 750gb internal hard drive on my macbook pro, has filled up again so it only has 10gb free space. So basically I have almost 3TB of files on my external hard drive, and 740gb on my internal.. This can't be right. There is no way I have this many files. I am guessing I have some of the same files on my internal that I do on my external.. Most of my files are high quality HD video files that I imported through final cut pro x....
So I bought another 3TB external hard drive that I haven't used yet. Basically, I just want to move all my files that are on my internal hard drive (roughly 750gb) onto my NEW external 3TB hard drive- and then delete the files off my internal so I have more free space. I just don't know if these files are already being backed up on my OLD external 3TB hard drive.
Can someone please help? Thank you!

craigbuckley wrote:
If I get rid of my TIme Machine, will I lose all my files from the past?
Yes it will unless you back it up first out of TM.
TimeMachine is a self rotating image of your boot drive with saved states, it manages itself based upon the available space on the drive. As new states are created, old ones are deleted along with older versions of your files.
Also if you incur a drastic large change to your boot drive, TimeMachine will DELETE older versions of your files.
TimeMachine is not a archival solution!
To rescue yourself from TimeMachine, you will first need to save the recent copy of file(s) to the new 3TB, then restore the older version of the file from TimeMachine to the boot drive and then rename it/date it and save that older copy to the new 3TB drive.
This way you have both the new copy and the old copy of the file pernamently archived on the new 3TB drive.
Once you have exhausted all of TimeMachines older files, you can free yourself from it, erase the drive.
For your needs, I suggest this.
Internal drive and bootable clone
1: Your internal 750GB boot drive contains active working files.
2: You have another external drive that's either 750GB or 1TB, you use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your boot drive, update it when you know you have a stable OS X system on your boot drive and before updates or changes, this way if the update goes bad and the machine will not boot. You can connect the clone, hold the option key down and boot the comptuer from the clone. You then can get online to get help, or simply reverse clone your software problems away.
CCC has the ability like TimeMachine to save states between clones, it's on be default but you can turn this off as to maintain a pure clone, this is what I advise you do as to avoid confusion. You clone is a perfect copy since the last update of the clone, which you can setup to do nightly if you wish or every few days or every few weeks, whatever.
Your bootable clone is your lifesaver if your boot hard drive dies or refuses to boot up, you can boot from the clone in seconds and only be slightly off since the last update of the clone. TM won't run the computer like a clone will.
I highly adise keeping your clone in a very safe place, away from theft, fire, electrical, etc.
http://www.bombich.com/
External Storage Drives
3: Your first external 3TB drive (sans TimeMachine) will be your storage drive, this will contain any files that you don't wish to have on the internal drive and as a result also not on the clone.
You maintain folders that are dated, with older copies of files in those folders if you wish. This way you can control the space on the drive and not make multiple duplicates of all the large files like TM does.
For instance if you work on a 100GB project for three days, instead of having three copies taking up 300GB like what TM does, you can rather choose to have just one older copy at 100GB. You can decide you don't need a particular older version of a file and remove it, thus managing your drive space yourself.
4: Your other external 3TB is a Carbon Copy Cloner backup of the first 3TB, maintain a perfect clone of that as well and update it periodically as your needs change. Since CCC can be schedualed and works in the background, you can have it update your clones overnight or another time your not using the machine. This free's up performance as TM isn't running in the background while your trying to work.
Also with no TM local cache file, that also will free up space on the boot drive.
The general rule is you need both hardware AND software protection for your data, thus with too much data to fit on the boot drive, you need a external storage drive and then a backup of that as to maintain TWO hardware copies of your data at all times.
This method is also scaleable, if you need more room than 3TB externally, you then get another 2 3TB drives, one for the new data and one for backup.
The bootable clone of your bootdrive is kept in a very safe place, it's designed to protect your OS X investment in software etc. and espectially, to get your Mac booting in as short as a time as possible while you plan on a replacement boot hard drive/repair.
Read more about the advanced options bootable clones give here.
Most commonly used backup methods
With your large storage needs, you basically have outgrown TimeMachine by hitting the hardware limit of drives.
If there were 10-20TB drives, you likely could keep on going with TimeMachine, but you can't.
Your clearly in the more "professional" catagory with your storage management needs, not in the TM "newbie to computers" where it's managed for you.
If your finding your needs are going to exceed 6TB, you might want to consider a external hardware RAID 5 box with 5+ drives, they will self redundancy so if a drive dies you just switch it with a new one and the missing data is copied from the other drives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://www.macgurus.com/
Good Luck

Need to free up space on hard drive

I have been trying to free up some space on my hard drive have removed all photos and a lot of music and some programs not using still not seeing much gain in storage space what can I do to clean up some space

teamfollis:
Dr. Smoke's FAQ linked by eww has a comprehensive list of things you can do to clean up your HDD. This should give you breathing space. However, your HDD remains the same, and the freed space will soon fill up again. Besides, if you have the original HDD in the computer, it likely near the end of its useful life.
Here are some other ideas:
• Get an external firewire HDD and put iTunes Music folder and iPhoto Library on it.
• Use your external HDD as your boot drive.
• Install a new larger capacity HDD. The original HDD in your computer is likely within the 3 to 5 years that these drives last on average. You can purchase and install a larger and faster HDD that will keep everything in one place, and will give you the 15% to 20% contiguous free space the HDD needs for efficient functioning.
Please do post back with further questions or comments.
cornelius
Message was edited by: cornelius

Moving photos and movies to free up space on hard drive

My MacBook hard drive is almost full. The majority of the space is taken up by photos and movies. I would like to move my current collection of photos and movies to an external hardrive, and then delete the files off my harddrive so that I have the space available to add more photos. However, I still want to easily access the old photos on the external harddrive and the new photos thta will be put on the hard drive. Any suggestions and the best way to accomplish this?

Easiest way to do this would be to copy your iTunes folder (located inside your home folder/Music) to your external hard drive. Next, open iTunes while holding down the option key on your keyboard. When iTunes asks you to select a music library to use, select the one on the external hard drive. Test to make sure everything is working just as it did with your old library. Assuming it does, you can now delete the iTunes folder on your internal hard drive.
The same process can be used with iPhoto.
Best of luck.

How do I get Finder windows to display free space on hard drive?

In Snow Leopard if you opened a Finder window, at the bottom it would show how much free space your hard drive had left. Lion by default does not do this. Is there a way where I can turn that option on so i can view space availible when opening Finder windows?

Stop blaming yourself. You're not an idiot and it's never the user's fault. It's always the designer's fault. Read "The Design of Everyday Things' by Donald Norman. It's a gerat book about how everyday things can be just difficult to use. He's been also a former Apple employee. Great reading!

Whats the best way to transfer all my pic and vid files from Mac Air to back up drive to free up space on hard disk?

whats the best way to transfer all my pic and vid files from Mac Air to back up drive to free up space on hard disk?

Get a third drive if needed, open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences, set it not to exclude that drive, and drag the files to it. If you're moving an iTunes or iPhoto library, launch the application with the Option key held down and choose the moved library.
(118789)

Trying to upgrade to newest version of iPad software but not enough space on hard drive to backup the iPad. It is saying if I continue all content on iPad will be deleted! Can I get it back after uprade by just synching with itunes?

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I would recommend deleting contents off your hard-drive to make space (how much is left..you should be having 15% free as a general practice) and backing up the phone prior to upgrading.

Query to find out the free disk space on C: drive

Hi Guys,
I am trying to create a query in Queries section under Monitoring, To find out the free disk space of C: drive.
Am using the below query, but it shows lot many fields, I need only Machine names of the collection and their
Free Disk Space on C: drive
select * from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK on SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK.ResourceId = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK.DeviceID = "C:" and SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK.FreeSpace > 1024
Please assist

The SELECT part of the query will govern what fields you are shown, so perhaps try:
Select SMS_R_System.ResourceID, SMS_R_System.NETBIOSname, SMS_G_System_Logical_Disk.FreeSpace
from SMS_R_System
inner join SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK on SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK.ResourceId = SMS_R_System.ResourceId
where SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK.DeviceID = "C:" and SMS_G_System_LOGICAL_DISK.FreeSpace > 1024
I hope that helps,
Nash
Nash Pherson, Senior Systems Consultant
Now Micro -
My Blog Posts
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share your feedback.
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I have a tried to format my seagate free agent 1TB external hard drive so I can use it, but I keep getting an error message saying it failed. Can n e 1 help me plz

I have a tried to format my seagate free agent 1TB external hard drive so I can use it, but I keep getting an error message saying it failed. Can n e 1 help me plz

This article has a link for more information on finding your profile directory: [[Fix the "Could not initialize the application's security component" error message]]. On Windows 7, you can try this (either in a Windows Explorer window address bar or from the start menu search box):
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
You may see one folder in there and that's the one you want. If you see more than one, look for the one with the most recently modified files.

Why does firefox's internet files take so much space on hard drive?

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Diane Wordsmith wrote:
If you did not see the dialog box asking if you wanted to delete from the hard drive, I think this may be one of those options where you can say "Don't ask again," meaning until you trash your iTunes prefs, it will cease asking the question.
you can bring those dialogs back. iTunes > preferences > advanced > reset all dialog warnings
JGG

I have a Free Agent external backup hard drive connected to my iMac Intel desktop via USB. Why do I get an error message, from time to time, upon startup stating: "disk was disconnected improperly, always eject disk before disconnecting"?

I have a Free Agent external backup hard drive connected to my iMac Intel desktop via USB, I never unplug it. Why do I get an error message, from time to time, upon startup stating, "Disk was disconnected improperly. Always eject disk before disconnecting."?

I never unplug the external harddrive, and the error message comes up only occassionaly upon startup. Maybe the USB connection gets disrupted enough to cause the computer to see it as disconnected and then reconnected while the iMac is powered.

I clearing space on hard drive,wheel deleted.I'm told it's important,how do I return this user called 'wheel',on hard drive.On my MacBook air 11(Late).

HELP! In attempt clearing space on hard drive,user called 'wheel' got deleted.I'm told it's important,how do I return this user called 'wheel',on hard drive.On my MacBook air 11(Late).

Back up all data.
Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at the startup chime. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
Note: You need an always-on Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet to use Recovery. It won’t work with USB or PPPoE modems, or with proxy servers, or with networks that require a certificate for authentication.
When the OS X Utilities screen appears, follow the prompts to reinstall the OS. You don't need to erase the boot volume, and you won't need your backup unless something goes wrong. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade, so make a note of those before you begin.

Should I Delete Old or Empty Catalogs to Free Space on Hard Drive?

Somehow I ended up with three catalogs in LR 4 -- Catalog.lrcat, Catalog-2.lrcat and Catalog-3.lrcat. My original catalog in LR3 was Catalog.lrcat. When I upgraded to LR4, Catalog-2.lrcat was created, and this is the catalog that I use. I'm not sure how Catalog-3 was created, but all of the images are grayed out and have question marks on them.
I would like to free up some space on my hard drive by getting rid of -- deleting -- Catalog (104MB) and Catalog-3 (103MB). Is this not recommended? And exactly how do I go about deleting a catalog?

Here's one way to do it (year-by-year archives):
* select the year's photos
* choose export as catalog:
export to whereever you'd like to keep such stuff.
Here's another way:
* simply copy your active catalog folder to whereever you'd like to keep such stuff (exit Lightroom first).
The first way, you'll have multiple archive catalogs, one for each year. You'd never fall back to one of these, but you may import from them.
The second way, you'll also have multiple catalogs, each will be bigger by amount added since last archive... Again, you are unlikely to fall back to one of these, but you could, especially if you save xmp too, in which case you could recover most work by falling back to most recent archive catalog and read xmp metadata for all photos edited since then.
Different folks like different strokes - if you invent another scheme you prefer - do share it. For example you may want to archive just the lrcat file (e.g. as backed up by Lr), or maybe the whole cat folder (except for previews). Also, you may want to archive other user files too, e.g. as backed up by "Aux Backup" plugin. Note: if you use the first approach, you can backup photo source files in with the archived catalog (which is one reason I recommend it - a catalog with no photo files is about as much fun as a dead puppy...). If you use the second approach, you'll need a different plan for saving associated master image files (lest your archived storage grow like streganona's spaghetti pot ;-}).
Hope this helps,
Rob

Macintosh HD and Bootcamp Installer Disagree on Free space on Hard Drive

Im having a hard drive issue.
I have 500 gb and macosx shows about 300gb free.
I'm attempting to install windows and the assistant gives about 100gb of space but I'd like 200 or so for windows.
Theres a discrepancy in available hard drive space!
I had installed windows prior and made the mistake of following some bad advice and re partitioning for extra space within windows 8. After this I lost the windows partition. I have a third party disk utility that says the drive needs repaired. The drive has issues with discrepancies in drive space and sectors used and not used. The volume gets repaired and allowed some more space for windows (the 100gb) but I should assumably be allowed most all the free space available and would like to (iI have an external for large files).
How can I fix this? I dont mind command line. Are there third party utilities?

You have two issues.
1. Partitioning within Windows and OS X are using two different personalities of a disk, and if not kept in sync, you run into this issue. Apple does not allow Windows partition to be resized because they do not provide the appropriate tools to keep them in sync.
2. If you are willing to take a backup of OS X and all your files, the cleanest method is to erase the drive and restore from a backup, preferably using a Time Machine backup.

Any thoughts on tackling a lack of free space on hard drive?

Photoshop Elements 9 has left me with little free space on my hard drive. Per my conversation with Adobe tech support, an external hard drive (which I currently do not own) should not be used to run Photoshop 9, but rather I should move my pictures there. (I have several "hundreds of pictures in jpeg). I would think that this is OK for editing, whereby I'm only working with one picture at a time. If I follow Adobe's suggestion, wouldnt I essentially be eliminating the Organizer function once the pictures are moved to an external drive? Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Some of the newer PC's don't have internal drive space because they have raid'ed drives.
I purchased 3 external 1Tb drives, 2 at home 1 at my office and I backup (never mind how to the office, that's a whole other thing) to one at home and one at the office -- and my phots are on the other 1Tb at home.
They cost me $99 each, but shortly after they become $69 each -- not much given the cost of the photos!

Free up space on Hard drive

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