Hard drive space issues

I have some hard drive space issues.
At present I only have about 13GB remaining on my 40GB hard drive, which is not necessarily an issue except that I have almost nothing installed/saved on my machine. I have 1 CD ripped to iTunes, no photos in the iPhoto library. I did a quick look with Disk Inventory X and found that the "Printer" folder is 3.2GB - can I get rid of some/all of that as I don't intend to print from the machine?
What is filling my disk? As far as I can tell the OS should only take up around 3 GB so where did the other 24GB go? Where, oh where?

Yes, you can delete printer drivers you don't use. OS X takes up far more than 3 GBs. A pretty minimal installation is nearly 7 GBs. Your computer also may have came with pre-bundled software applications (not standard OS X applications.) OS X will also use potentially 10 GBs of space on a temporary basis for temporary files, log files, and cache files. So for a 40 GB drive it's not too surprising to have only 13 GBs free. Perhaps it's time for you to put in a larger hard drive. You can purchase hard drives at:
MacSales.com
Buy.com
NewEgg.com
The Mini uses a notebook drive. If you have a pre-2006 (Intel) model it uses an ATA drive. After that year they use SATA drives.

Similar Messages

Can't download applications (poss due to hard drive space issue)?

Hi there,
I'm having major hard drive issues with my MacBook Pro OS X 10.4.11 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM laptop.
I use it for video editing and also keep music on it. However for the video editing I use an external hard drive, though I've found some Final Cut Pro files on my internal hard drive before and deleted them whenever I've found them. Sometimes it's an Imovie project, sometimes a straightforward final cut project, sometimes a playout of a final cut project.
My problem is that I now have almost no hard drive space, to the point where I wasn't able to save a Word file last week due to insufficient disk space! I emptied the trash and managed to get it to save in the end.
I immediately went on to the discussions pages and it was suggested to try WhatSize, OmniDiskSweeper and Disk Inventory to identify the files that were taking up all the room. Unfortunately NONE of these applications will download onto my laptop. They're not the only ones, I tried downloading a couple of other applications for music and the like and NOTHING will download!
I went through everything that I felt I knew for certain that I could delete without being detrimental and freed up a small bit of room and tried again but still NOTHING. I then used Onyx on the suggestion of another post and freed up a few gigs (I went from 1.7gb available to 7gb available) and assumed that this would do the trick, however, it hasn't!
What happens when I try to download these (or any) applications is that when i click the "Download Now" area on the webpage it begins to move onto what should be a download progress page or a "download complete" page but instead just spends an eternity "loading", with the little loading wheel on the left of the tab just spinning around and around. I tried leaving it literally all night last night but to no avail, opened it back up again and still the circle was spinning around and around "loading". This has been the case for the several dozen attempts I've made, no matter what the website.
It seems like something of a Catch 22 if the situation is that I can't download these applications that will help me to free up Hard Drive space, because I don't have any Hard Drive space! Though I'd have thought that the 7gb I now have would be ample. Did my laptop turn to self preservation mode perhaps when the hard drive was down to the bare minimum and I wasn't even able to save word documents?
If anybody can help it'd be HUGELY appreciated...
All the best,
Rory

If you open a Finder window you can also sort by size by clicking the size column header. In view options you can also set it to calculate all sizes so it will also show folder sizes. Although not as handy as the cataloging applications you can at least start tracking down where the disk space is going. With video you can probably just copy half a dozen files off and immediately free up many GB.
Note that this isn't just a matter of convenience. OSX makes lots of temporary files and is doing it all the time. If it can't find space for those files it can result in a serious drive crash and that could cost you several hundred dollars in recovery expenses. A Sig indicates, you need space just for computer operation. I feel the % recommendation is a bit vague since people use drives ranging from 10 - 1000 GB in size. My computer regularly uses 6GB of hard drive space for temporary files, and I like to leave wriggle room, so I usually leave at least 15-20GB. You can check the temporary file usage by looking at VM in Activity monitor.
As BDaqua observes, having a crowded drive also slows down your computer. If it has to hunt for nooks and crannies in which to place bits and pieces of bigger files that takes time. Normally one does not have to worry so much about fragmentation of files on a Mac, but your scenario of working with large files on a really crowded drive may be defying that generalization.

Hard Drive space issue

I was wondering if anybody has been experiencing hard drive space disappearing slowly? After a month I am down to 35 gigs when I haven't installed anything. I have deleted my cache every time I get off the internet and it still has the problem. The issue is occuring on a MacBook Pro.
Help!
Thanks

There are a number of possible explanations. While you may haven't installed software you've been using your computer and creating files which takes up space. If you have an iOS device perhaps you've been taking pictures and are using PhotoStream - so your pictures are now on your computer. You are using email and it is being indexed even if you aren't copying messages to the computer plus attachments are being copied to the computer. Also your operating system and programs create cache files - temporary files - which don't always get deleted (more on this later) and create log files. All this takes up space. Oh, and when you trash something don't forget to empty the trash. (Look under File in the Finder menu - the trash doesn't get automatically deleted.)
The cache files I mentioned above should get trimmed and deleted but they don't always. Sometimes a cache just keeps growing and growing until it takes over the computer. It isn't common but it does happen. Every once in a while I'll restart in Safe Mode - that done by restarting the computer and holding the shift key until the Apple icon appears. This performs a disk directory check (which is a good thing to do once a month or so or any time you force quit the computer) and it also deletes and trims cache files. Once you've gotten to the Finder restart as normal.
If you are using TimeMachine to back up your computer, by default you also have mobile backups running. When your computer isn't connected to its TimeMachine drive the hourly backups are made to the local hard drive instead. Mobile backups are intelligent - when the space on your drive dips down to 20GB older mobile backups are deleted to keep that 20GB free space the OS needs. Eventually if the drive continues to fill up with your stuff and there's no room for mobile backups they are deleted entirely and no more made until/unless you delete some of your stuff.

Macbook Pro hard drive space issue - iPhoto not responding

        I have a MacBook Pro running snow leopard. Has got two user accounts on it. Comes up with 29 Gb remaining on the internal hard drive. IPhoto was not responding in my wife's account. I think the hard drive space is the issue here. I have had a number of attempts to get the "29 Gb remaining" changing to a higher figure but those attempts do not increase that figure.
      I did keep trying to securely remove trash, by removing some of the events in my iPhoto first, and removing the iTunes libraries of both accounts. When securely emptying the trash, it came up with 27,000 items to delete, and took all night. On re-starting the laptop, the "29 Gb remaining" was unchanged. Any tips to get this figure up, and be able hopefully to access my wife's iPhoto account ? Then try from there.
       I got an iMac running iTunes with the libraries there. So I need no music in the laptop.

I started up the laptop today. Finder showed there was 65 Gb available . Maybe takes a day or two to bed in, any changes from securily emptying the trash. Fired up iPhoto, had a beach ball for 10 seconds, holding my breath "here we go again"...... then it stopped spinning . The application was then alright. Works okay this evening.
Looks like the issue is solved

MacBook Pro hard drive space issue

I am running out of space on my 500GB hard drive. I shifted some files (Lightroom library, etc.) to an external drive about a year ago but am looking to now move my iPhoto Library & iTune music off my hard drive. I am considering a LaCie Wieless Space drive taht I could access as a network hard drive. I could also get a non-wifi drive and plug it into my Time Capsule.
Does anyone have any experience/suggestions with these methods and the quality of accessing music and photo libraries via a wireless drive? Any thoughts are appreciated.
Jeff

I started up the laptop today. Finder showed there was 65 Gb available . Maybe takes a day or two to bed in, any changes from securily emptying the trash. Fired up iPhoto, had a beach ball for 10 seconds, holding my breath "here we go again"...... then it stopped spinning . The application was then alright. Works okay this evening.
Looks like the issue is solved

Hard drive space issue.. after installation.

I installed snow leopard today on my MBP...
when i look at istat it says I have 278GB free
but when i look at disk utility or finder, it says i have 299GB free
which is right?

Apple decided to change the way it measures storage capacity, so that a (for example) a "320 GB" hard drive really shows 320 instead of 298. Once we get further into the terabyte range, the difference in the "marketing" number and the computer-reported number would have become ridiculous.
The different is in how humans count, in base 10, versus how computers count, in binary where the equivalent of 1000 is 1024. So the number reported by computers has always been lower. As the storage capacity number gets higher, the difference becomes more pronounced. So Apple just decided to translate the computer number back to the base 10 equivalent, and report that number.
So the two numbers are both correct, they are just counting differently. I suppose the third-party apps will change to match Apple's new standard.

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>

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/]

Missing Hard Drive Space + Other Issues

My Macbook's been acting funny lately - it wouldn't always come out of sleep, and every now and then an application would crash but its icon would stay in the Dock and there would be no way to get rid of it. When I tried typing in my password on the login screen (when it was coming out of sleep) the field would keep losing focus and delete everything in it. I have the 120GB hard drive (It says 111, but I assume that's the 1024 vs 1000 thing), and about a year and a half ago it failed, but I brought it to the Apple Store and they gave me a new one, which has been working fine.
The macbook had been doing some weird stuff, so I've been using the computer I'm typing on for the last few weeks, but two days ago I decided to reset the PRAM and SMC and try using the macbook again. It was working fine, but then I locked the screen and did something else for a while. I went to go shut it down that night, and it wouldn't show me the login screen for unlocking the screen, and it showed me the spinning cursor instead. I just shut the top, and the next morning it was just giving me a black screen when I opened the top.
I held down the power button to shut it off, and later in the day turned it back on again, and it seemed to be working. I was running a few applications (Firefox, Bitpim, and Transmission) when it started crashing again. The menu bar didn't work, the dock wouldn't show, keyboard shortcuts didn't work, etc. I shut the top and went somewhere for a few hours.
I came back, and was going to shut down the computer by holding the power button, so while it was still in sleep I unplugged both of my external hard drives. When I unplugged the USB one it turned on the computer, so I opened it, typed in my password, and plugged the drives back in. The computer seemed to be working again, but about a minute later a window popped up saying my startup disk's space was low. When I'd shut the top that morning there had been around 40 - 50GB left, but now there was about 500MB left on the disk. The size of my User folder was still the same - around 20GB, and I'm trying to see the size of the System folder now, but the hard drive is being extremely slow. I'm also trying to use Disk Inventory X, but it's taking an extremely long time (like 10 minutes for a file that's only a few KB).
The dock also seems to be "frozen" - no new applications I open show in the dock, even if I'm using them, and when I clicked to open them in finder they showed up in my recently opened folder in the Dock, but didn't actually open. I clicked on them again through that folder and they actually open, but it still doesn't show them in finder. Applications that I've quit (and their process is gone in Activity Monitor) are still in the Dock with the little dot under them that they're open.
The Macbook is still under warranty, but I live far away from the closest Apple Store, and it would be difficult for me to get anyone to drive me there, so I'd prefer some sort of a solution where I wouldn't need to bring it in (But I know I'll probably need to, and I will be able to, just not for a week or two).
Are any of the problems related? Is there anything I can do on my own to fix it? Should I try rebooting it, even if the hard drive is almost empty (Doesn't that cause problems booting it?), or should I wait until Disk Inventory X finishes first?
Edit: There was a folder in /Volumes that had the name of my external hard drive, and had some files in it (The ones that were being used in Transmission), so I deleted those and got the hard drive space back. All of the other problems are still happening though - my dock is still all screwed up, etc.
Message was edited by: cfogel

Also, some more details:
I while ago I tried rebooting and it just gave me a gray screen and played the startup chime over and over, but I held down the power button and tried again and it worked. However, when I boot it stays on the gray screen for a while before it shows me the apple logo, then it stays on that for a while before it shows me the spinning thing that it's loading. Also, once it boots it hangs on a blue screen for a while before letting me log in.
When I look in Console there's always a million "Feb 5 18:19:58 localhost kernel[0]: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad: family specific matching fails" for every piece of hardware from every boot.
For a while when I tried verifying my hard drive using Disk Utility it crashed the computer. I've tried repairing permissions, checked my SMART status, and used various maintenance tools.

Can i restrict apple mail client from downloading all emails...and allow it to pick a start date for gmail mail to sync? i am flooded with old emails, thousands on them ...eating hard drive space of my macbook pro and un necessary overhead

can i restrict apple mail client from downloading all emails...and allow it to pick a start date for gmail mail to sync? i am flooded with old emails, thousands on them ...eating hard drive space of my macbook pro and un necessary overhead

The genius bar technicians can check your MBP for possible hardware problems and specific software issues that you may have. The diagnosis will be free. Any extensive repairs will not be free.
If you have minor software problems, you essentially will have to deal with them yourself. Examine these two comprehensive documents for possible problem definition and solutions. If you encounter problems that you are unable to cope with, start a new discussion and there will be persons willing to assist you in solving them.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3521
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3353
Ciao.

Primary hard drive upgrade issues

All this great software has finally taken its toll on the 80Gb of hard drive space that this computer came with (Just for the record, I use the primary drive for the OS and applications only -- I store all of my data on other drives).
So, I need to upgrade the primary hard drive so I can install even more software and do even more amazing things . I'm going to upgrade my primary drive to a 120gb.
I've got Carbon Copy Cloner, but it hasn't solved a couple of issues:
First off, when I make the dupe, it doesn't maintain the original disk's Tech Tool Pro eDrive partition -- I need this on my new drive just in case. Now, you'll say "Why don't you just uninstall Tech Tool Pro and then re-install it when you set up your new drive?" Well, that's because Micromat tracks how many installs you make with any particular activation code, and I'd have to purchase another license to do another install -- and I really don't want to have to lay out $$ when there's really no clear reason.
Secondly, the CCC'd dupe doesn't play well with Classic. (Yeah, I'm a hold-out who still has a couple of OS9 oldies-but-goodies that I won't give up). The CCC'd dupe drive doesn't contain the OS9 drivers that I need to be able to successfully run Classic.
So, my overall question is this -- how do I properly set up my new 120gb drive and then properly transfer a complete image of my old 80gb drive onto it so I maintain all my functionality and all my software applications, but wind up with more space to play?
Thanks!

I solved my own problem! Here's how we did it:
First, we booted up using the Tech Tool Pro disk and removed the eDrive partition from the original boot drive.
Next, we took the new target drive (we went with a 250gb rather than a 120 -- more is always better, no?) and formatted it using Disk Utility from the OSX Panther install disk. This allowed us to put in the OS9 drivers on the disk (didn't find the option for this with Tiger's DU).
Then we used CCC to clone the old drive over. Then I did a little bit of physical re-arranging so that the new drive was in the master spot on the primary IDE chain in the box.
Finally, we booted up again using the TTP disk and had TTP create a new eDrive on the 250gb disk.
After all that, everything works just fine! No problems running apps in Classic, and no need to re-install TTP and spend more money on another license!

How can i tell how much hard drive space my website is taking up on my computer?

I have a website that i build through iweb and publish via mobile me. i have about 200 podcasts on the site, and I am trying to figure out how much hard drive space this is taking up on my computer. these files are not in itunes, and i'm not concerned about the space they are taking up in my cloud, i just want to know how much space on my computer they are taking up because i'm trying to decide if i should move my iweb site to a different computer to alleviate some space issues. any help would be much appreciated.

Check the size of the Domain.site2 file that is in your Users/Home/Library/Application Support/iWeb folder. it contains all of the files used to create and publish your site. I'm not sure if it copies the podcasts into it or not. You can open the domain package and do a search for them. Just don't move, rename or delete any files inside that package or your site is toast.
OT

Missing hard drive space after failed migration assistant transfer

When I first got my 13" macbook pro (about a month ago), I attempted to use Migration Assistant to move my files from my old 15" MBP. After starting the transfer, my old MBP locked up (or so I thought) & I had to quit the process. When I looked to see if anything transfered to the 13", I couldn't find anything, but there was hard drive space, maybe about 15 GB, missing. I looked everywhere I knew to look, in all folders all over my computer but came up emptyhanded. Although I've been using macs for years, I have little knowledge of all the inner workings/hidden files, etc. so I've reached the end of my abilities. I've searched all over & have been unable to find an answer. I had originally decided to just let it go & deal with a few missing gigabytes, but I just have to know what's going on. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Problem solved! Ran Disk Utility not in recover mode again, and it identified that the logical size wasn't right. Repair Disk while logged in - and at the upper level "Macintosh HD" on the left sidebar - fixed the issue, and I'm going to not attempt to run Boot Camp again for a while just in case :-p

Microsoft Word 2008 wonays no hard drive space available, which

I have 196 GB of free hard drive space as well as 4 GB of RAM on my MacBook Pro. No other applications are running. No volumes are mounted to the desktop. I am running the most recent Mac OS (10.5.8) and have installed all Microsoft Office 2008 updates.
Yet when I go to save a 7 MB Word Document--which is already saved to my hard drive--after making a small change, I get this error message:
"The disk is full trying to write to 'MacIntosh HD'. Free some space on this drive, or save the document on another disk.
Try one or more of the following:
*Close any unneeded documents, programs. and windows.
*Save the document on another disk."

Just my 2 cents, after encountering exactly the same problem: I saved the same file in the .docx format, having previously directed Word 2008 to use the 97-2004 .doc format.
While this didn't remove the problem of Auto-save complaining about the bogus disk-full issue, it did seem to allow me to save the document continuously without complaint.

New User Account has No Hard Drive Space

I also have a different problem and started a thread here. It was that thread that lead me to start this new one.
One of the people helping me there suggested I make a new user account and see if that solved my problem. I made two new user accounts, one a 'standard' and the other an 'administrator.' In both cases the new user accounts have no hard drive space, and no download or document folder in the dock.
Logging out of either of those accounts and back as myself (administrator) I have 410 gb of free hard drive space.
Any thoughts on what could be happening or how to resolve? My hard drive recently disappeared so I took it in to a Mac Genius and under AppleCare the hard drive was replaced. I did a full restore from Time Machine and have repaired permissions countless times since then and also run DiskWarrior. Repair Permissions returns a message that Apple has posted can be ignored; no other issues. DiskWarrior found two errors related to directory structure and repaired/replaced them. Other than my original problem and this new one regarding the new user accounts having no hard drive space my system runs fine.
I am running Mac OS X 10.5.5.

Sorry I wasn't clear in the first post. On my way into work today I started thinking it may be time to start over as well. You mentioned archive and install - would a clean install be better (I know it will be longer)?
Also, just for clarification - when I did a Full Restore from Time Machine was that the same as say restoring from a program like SuperDuper (that clones the hard drive)?
My thinking on this is if I do clean install, I should not restore from Time Machine if the structure carries over. That could be what is causing these problems. Instead I should back up my iPhoto and iTunes libraries via the built in back-up (to an external hard drive or DVDs), back up any documents, etc. and then really start over. Do a clean install, then reload 3rd party software from the original disks and restore the iPhoto and iTunes libraries, etc.

Hard drive space issues

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