Hard drive is full with 'other'

i am trying to figure out why my computer is running slow.
I saw that my Hard Drive is almost full.
most of it is filled up with "Other". how can i find out whats taking up almost 450GB on my computer?
thanks

What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?- Apple Support Communities
Things You Can Do To Resolve Slow Downs
If your computer seems to be running slower here are some things you can do:
Start with a visit to: OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney.
Boot into Safe Mode then repair your hard drive and permissions:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions Pre-Lion/Mountain Lion
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Repair the Hard Drive - Lion/Mountain Lion
Boot from your Lion Recovery HD. When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Restart your computer normally and see if this has helped any. Next do some maintenance:
Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For situations Disk Utility cannot handle the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard or Lion and should not be installed.
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems. For more about malware see Macintosh Virus Guide.
I would also recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX 2.4.3, or Cocktail 5.1.1 that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. There is no confirmation that this version also works with Lion.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Data Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. SyncTwoFolders
6. Synk Pro
7. Synk Standard
8. Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.
Additional Hints
Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity as free space.
Add more RAM. If your computer has less than 2 GBs of RAM and you are using OS X Leopard or later, then you can do with more RAM. Snow Leopard and Lion work much better with 4 GBs of RAM than their system minimums. The more concurrent applications you tend to use the more RAM you should have.
Always maintain at least 15 GBs or 10% of your hard drive's capacity as free space, whichever is greater. OS X is frequently accessing your hard drive, so providing adequate free space will keep things from slowing down.
Check for applications that may be hogging the CPU:
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time, then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Often this problem occurs because of a corrupted cache or preferences file or an attempt to write to a corrupted log file.

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External Hard Drive non compatible with others PCs

I format a Hard Drive to Mac but now it could not be recognized by Window in other computer. Which format I need to select in orther to be able to get and give info in other PCs

I think that attempting to use a disk for both Mac and Windows is a false economy.
Disks are cheap enough now that you can just get one for each platform.
As far as the sharing of data between the two platforms goes, use the network. It will cause way fewer problems then a single disk will.
Allan

I have a Mac book pro with 750 gigs of space but when I check the memory available it's telling me that I have 1.5 gigs of available space and that my scratch hard drive is full. When looking in the color code of storage it's all other consuming the space

Ok so I have a MacBook Pro that has 750 gigs of space but I keep getting an error message that my scratch hard drive us full. When I look at the storage it's saying that I have 1.5 available gigs of space and when I dig deeper it shows that it's not video, audio or document but it's other. What can it be and what can I do about it?

See here for answer about the OTHER which is taking up space:
http://pondini.org/TM/30.html
and here:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
See Kappys excellent note on the rest of “other” files taking up your space:
What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?

MacBook hard drive is full again. Replaced original hard drive with a Samsung SSD 840 Pro Series 256GB hard drive about 18 mo. ago, but my MacBook is now already saying that my hard drive is full again. 13in. Alum. Late 2008 MacBook

My MacBook hard drive is full again. I have a 13in. Aluminum, Late 2008 MacBook, and about 18 months ago (in October 2013), I replaced the original hard drive with a Samsung SSD 840 Pro Series 256GB hard drive. However, my MacBook is now already saying that my hard drive is full again. When I check "System Information," under "Storage," it states the following: Audio 52.02 GB; Movies 33.68GB; Photos 43.13GB; Apps 14.76 GB; Backups 174.4 MB; and Other 96.39GB.
Also, at home, I have an Apple Time Capsule 4th Generation 2TB that I use as my wireless router, and I also use it for automatic backup via Time Machine. And when I first purchased Time Capsule, the first time I connected Time Capsule, Time Machine asked if I would like to use it to back up my files, and I clicked, "Use as Backup Disk." And that's really all I've ever done with Time Capsule.
In addition, I also have a LaCie Porsche Design P'9223 1TB external hard drive. I have copied my MacBook's hard drive onto my LaCie external hard drive.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Obviously the Audio, Movies, Photos, and Apps are taking up a lot of space... Any suggestions re: what I can do with Audio, Movies, Photos, and Apps? And what about the Other? Other is taking up 96.39 GB. What is Other, and what can I do about it?
And what about partitioning my hard drive... Is that something I should do? Should I partition, or configure, my MacBook's internal hard drive differently? And should I partition, or configure, my external hard drive? And if I need to partition, or configure, my MacBook's internal hard drive differently, how do I setup Time Machine to backup per any such changes? Same thing for my external hard drive?
13in. Aluminum, Late 2008 MacBook, 250 GB (with upgraded Samsung SSD 840 Pro Series 256GB hard drive)
Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
OS X 10.9.5
plus
Apple Time Capsule 4th Generation 2TB
LaCie Porsche Design P'9223 1TB external hard drive
Thank you for your help.

Partitioning makes no sense. You have a drawer full of stuff. Split it into two smaller drawers and you have two smaller drawers full of stuff.
Decide what you can store on external storage - your iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom libraries can all be stored on externals, as can your iTunes Libraries and so on. Do you need to carry 30 gigs of movies with you all the time? You can get portable drives the size of an iPhone these days.

Infected with malware. Says my hard drive is full, wont let me delete applications or allow clamx av to finish running.

Pretty much what the title says. I'm pretty sure I got it from some Japanese blog that gizmodo linked to. I can't delete files, can't download files because apparently my hard drive is full (even though i really have 77gb free) and clamx av is shut down before it is able to finish running. I don't really know what to do or if I even have malware. I never downloaded and installed an application like you have to do to activate the mac security malware. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

So when do you get the "your HD is full" message?

Macbook pro redina display keeps on telling me that the hard drive is full from Videos, and yet their is no videos, what can i do?

Macbook pro redina display keeps on telling me that the hard drive is full from Videos, and yet their is no videos, what can i do?

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. Ignore any other messages that appear in the Terminal window.
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.

How do i move photos to external hard drive for use with iphoto 11

My hard drive is full. I have a Lacie 3 TB external formatted for Mac Journaled. I want to keep my photos and other iPhoto 11 media on the external. Should I just move the iPhoto library to the external or some other way? For iTunes, I moved the iTune media folder location and copied my existing iTunes media folder over and deleted the old after telling iTune to go to the external drive folder.
I don't want to point iPhoto to the new location every time I open it. Any better way or just move the iPhoto library?

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto
And backup soon and often - having your iPhoto library on an external drive is not a backup and if you are using Time Machine you need to check and be sure that TM is backing up your external drive
LN

Hard drive is full software cannot get updated! what should I do?

Hard drive is full software cannot get updated! what should I do?

Here are some general tips to keep your Mac's hard drive trim and slim as possible
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 Mac'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.
Look through your other Mailboxes and other Mail categories to see If there is other mail you can archive and/or delete.
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.
To find other large files, download an app called Omni Disk Sweeper.
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!

MacBook Air saying hard drive is full when it's really not

I have just started getting error messages saying that my startup disk is full, saying I have "Zero KB" available, which makes sense being I have been doing a lot of downloading recently and have been learning Java programming (lots of Java and Class files), and the fact that 80GB isn't a lot of storage space these days (and hasn't been for at least the last 5 years), most notebooks these days have at least 200GB hard drives in them (that is one thing, that as much as I love Macs, has always irked me about them, very little storage space)
I have deleted over 30KB worth of unimportant files to free up some space (one file being 24KB alone), then opened a Finder window only to find out that it still says "Zero KB Available", if I delete 30+KB worth of files, shouldn't there be an equivalent amount of storage space afterwards? It doesn't make any sense that I would still be getting "Zero KB Available" after I deleted 30+KB worth of data
I am not sure if it's related, but for quite a while, I have noticed that my MacBook has been making a clicking noise, this has been happening for quite a while, though I have been hearing it less than before, and just recently I am now hearing what sounds like a screech coming from the MacBook (mostly when I put it on standby by closing the screen, right when the sleep mode initiates), though I have ignored it, being until now, I have not noticed any problems with the MacBook, no loss of data, no corruption, etc., and now the only problem I am experiencing is that it's saying my hard drive is 100% full even after deleting some files, though does fail when I try to verify the disk in Disk Utility
So is there a reasonable explanation for why it's saying my hard drive is full, or is it possible that there could be a potential disk failure?
Message was edited by: Mikedamirault2
Reason for edit: Paragraph Spacing

18tracks, a KB is small, Ill give you that, but the reply you typed alone, if copied to TextEdit and saved in TXT or RTF format should only be several bytes (under a KB), I have Java and Class files with plenty more text in it and they only range from 1KB to 8KBs, way below 30KB, though if I were to save this webpage as an HTML file, then yes, it would probably get close
Regardless, it doesn't matter how little I delete, even if I only delete one 1KB file, it should still say 1KB free, yes that is barely anything, but at least that means it would be accurate
My point, was I deleted 30+KBs worth of data (that is a rough estimate, I am not exactly sure how much I deleted) and Finder STILL said that I had "Zero KB" available, I don't know about you, but 30KB sure sounds like a HUGE difference than 0KB
To me, this means that it doesn't matter if I deleted 1KB, 1MB, or even 1GB worth, Finder would still say that "Zero KB" is available, and the OS will still refuse to save or manipulate files, to me, that's a sign that something much bigger is going on, and with the clicking and screeching going on (which may not necessarily be the hard drive, but you never know), and the fact that my hard drive failed a verification, something tells me my hard drive must not be in good shape, and could possibly be disastrous

My hard drive is full, and it will not let me delete anything... :(

hello, so here is the story...
i bought my iMac about a little more than half year ago and i really like this mac. About 3 months ago, my computer started popping up me hard drive is full messages, and i did not really bother to delete any files. Because i have been using computers before this one, and i have never used up all the spaces before and the computer i have used before had even smaller hard drives. At the time i did not think it is going to effect my usage of this computer so i kept on using it. After about a month, while i was using my computer, it suddenly shut down and when i restart it my desktop is a plain blue background, with no wallpaper or any icons. Then i tried to delete some files, but when i try to do so, i can not even open up my applications or any kind of window. The only thing that i can open is safari, so right now i can only serve the internet, can not even watch any videos or movies online...
can anyone tell me how to delete files right now, because my hard drive is so limited right now, i can not even open up anything, so there is no way to delete any files

In all your use of computers, did you learn how to recover your backups and have a good backup strategy in place?
Or are you going to need help now on backups, recoverying files (already some good threads to just re-read), and rebuild your hard drive.
For starters you will need one or more external drives, and install OS X on one of them and use one or part of one for recovering files.
You should be able to free up space. Just go to your home account folder / library / caches and trash anything to do with Safari like Metadata cache folder to free up a little.
You don't need to "open" anything other than Finder. And you probably want to boot with SHIFT KEY at the least on startup - continue to hold shift key until you hit the desktop.
But you really should not or limit any use of this hard drive, and work from and boot from another hard drive for now.
Pick up some USB/FW drives:
http://www.macsales.com/firewire

What's the best option when the internal hard drive is full?

Hi all,
I am running an iMac 27" with a 2 TB hard drive, which is supported by a 5 GB external RAID for backup (Time Machine and Aperture Vault).
At the moment I have RAW masters located on the iMac in a special folder and linked into Aperture (referenced masters) and the processed JPEG or TIFF files managed within Aperture (library is on the internal drive).
Well, it finally happened and the hard drive is full, and I need to think about how to reorganize my files.
What would be your preferred scenario of organizing files, keeping in mind both speed/performance and safety/backup (i.e., the reason master files are on the iMac and not just on the RAID is because that gives me one more copy).
Ideas I have come up with:
- Get the internal drive upgraded to 3 TB
- Get an additional external hard drive for the master files
- Split the library and move the less used files/projects to an external drive, keep the others on the drive
- Try to move other stuff (e.g., music) to an external drive (not sure that would be enough)
- Keep masters only on the RAID disk
Any opinions, ideally backed up by experience, would be greatly appreciated. If you'd go for an external drive, I'd also like to hear what kind of drive you'd recommend (this iMac does not have Thunderbolt, it is from 2009).
Thanks and cheers,
Bastian

The best option for your situation in my opinion would be to put the masters on an external drive as referenced masters and get a second external to back them up. This will move the masters off your internal drive freeing up space.
USB drives will be fine for this especially for the backup drive. If you can spring for FireWire so much the better.

Message that hard drive is full when clearly it is not!!!! HELP!!!

This is weird. Got a message that I had 117 mb left on hard drive. Dumped a bunch of programs and pictures. Then it said I had 25 gb on drive. Three days later, having done NOTHING, I got a message I was totally out of hard drive space again. Dumped a couple of programs - back up to 1.84 gb. An hour later it is full FULL AGAIN. I had done NOTHING. What is going on here??? My user folder says I have no space when I go to "get info" but when I check "get info" on all the folders inside (system, library, pictures, music, etc) it only adds up to half of the capacity of my hard drive (250 gbs). So in fact I know I only have less than 100 gb on that computer This is very strange. The drive is not full, and when I dump programs and data, it fills itself back up but can't find out why/how/where. I threw out the finder preferences but that didn't work. I booted up from my Leopard disk and it said my hard drive was full, but I KNOW it is not. What is going on??

Sounds like something is generating garbage. You've got a couple of options (at least) to track it down, starting with one tool built into the command-line interface. Pop open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Termain.app) and type in the following:
cd /
sudo du -hd 1
Enter your password when prompted. du is the Disk Usage command, which will print out the disk space taken up by each folder, including invisible ones. Note that du can take a fair bit of time to complete; my own drive took about 5-6 minutes with only 27GB on it, so yours will probably take longer.
Your other option is to grab Disk Inventory X, a freeware utility which performs a very similar job to du, but with a shiny user interface to help you locate the offending space waster. If you're not comfortable with the terminal, this may be the best place to start.

My iMac hard drive is full, and I don't know how to fix it.

My iMac hard drive is full. Approximately 495GB of "Other" is crushing it. I saw some threads online refer to this issue ... something to do with ASL files. Can anyone help?

First try to download OmniDiskSweeper then launch that to sweep the drive this will give you information on the size of your files and folders. This will give you a starting point as to what to do with your large files you can move them to an external hard drive or delete them within the program. Note: Be careful of the items you delete.

I had a repair done at the apple store where the replaced my hard drive and copied my other hard drive over to the new one. Everything is fine except the time machine wont reconnect to my old file and is trying create a new file but not enough space?

I had a repair done at the apple store where the replaced my hard drive and copied my other hard drive over to the new one. Everything is fine except the time machine wont reconnect to my old file and is trying create a new file but not there is not enough space for both files files? Do I need to do something to have it continue to update my old file instead of recreating a new one?

Depending on what version of OSX you're running, and how the data was transferred, you may be out of luck.
If you're running Lion, and your backups were made to a directly-connected external HD (ie, not a Time Capsule or other network location), you may be able to get Time Machine to "associate" the new disk with the old backups. See #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting, especially the pink box there.
If you're running Snow Leopard, you might be able to do a full system restore of your backups to the new HD. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #14 for detailed instructions. That should leave a "trail" that Time Machine can follow to "associate" the new drive with the old backups. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work, and there's no way to do it manually, as there is with Lion.

I can not get the new updates because my start disc and hard drive are full, I need 1.98 GB.

I can not get the new updates because my start disc and hard drive are full, I need 1.98 GB.

Some folks recommend OmniDiskSweaper to allow you to review your stuff to find possible candidates to throw away.
Even if you throw away some stuff and your desired "1.98GB", then what? If that's the number you need for the update, you'll just use most or all of the reclaimed space with the update and you are right back to where you started.
You don't specify what kind of machine you got but presumably it's a mac pro since you posted in the Mac Pro community. In which case just get yourself another drive or two and move stuff around to free up your boot drive.
[Perhaps you should hurry too since I expect hdd prices might be going up due to possible impending hdd shortages.]
Finally, if some of those updates are major system updates you want extra drives for backups because I always recommend you never do major updates to your system without backups to that system.

Hard drive is full with 'other'

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