Hard drive space short-only 55GB available of 60GB

After i installed MAC OS X, I found only 55GB of the 60GB Hard Drive available for use..My drive has no partitions..Am i doing something wrong somewhere, whereby i am losing 5GB..
Windows, on the other hand, consumes as low as 2-3GB max, even after 4-5 partitions..
Wat is the solution?
Thanx..

The article is still accurate, no matter how many "partitions" you have (a single drive is still a single partition). Hard drive manufacturers market their drives while referring to a Megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes (1,000×1,000). However, the Finder measures a Megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes (1024×1024). So, your "60GB" hard drive will have an actual useable capacity of something more like 55GB in the Finder. Blame the hard drive company's marketing folks for the confusion. :-/
-Doug

Similar Messages

Hard drive space after PC conversion

I recently made the switch from PC to mac and everything has been great. However, with my 80 gig hard drive space, I only have about 9 gigs left despite the fact that I've only used 15 gigs for music and 8 gigs for pictures.
Even allowing all the programs and peripherals 1 gig of space, where is the rest of my hard drive? I suspect that something happened when moving the files over from my PC (I had to do it via DVD discs because my PC melted), but how do I fix this?

I suspect that what has happened is the following:
You copied say, a DVD of music to somewhere on your hard drive. you then told iTunes either "Add to Library" or "Find music files on my hard drive" (the latter is a choice you only see when setting up iTunes for the first time)
What happened? iTunes copied the music to the folder - "your user name/Music/iTunes Music".
This is where iTunes looks for its tracks and is the important one. There is probably another folder - the one you copied from the DVD, still hanging around on your drive - it can be deleted.
iPhoto works in a similar way - it also has a copy to library function. The important file in this case is in your user name/Pictures/iPhoto Library.
When you got your mini it was also fully loaded with software at the factory. There are a number of items that you most likely do not need.
For instance, Mac OS X is accompanied by dozens of printer drivers, about 800 MB in all. If like most people, you only have one printer, they are just taking space. The drivers are in Macintosh HD/Library/Printers. Delete them and install the driver that came with your printer.
Mac Applications also come with loads of language files that you probably do not need either. You can download a free utility called Monolingual from versiontracker.com which will remove the unwanted language files. I save around 1.8 GB doing this.
Important: if your preferred language is not English you must retain it as well as the one you want. English is used by the operating system.
Removing the others will not prevent you from writing or checking spelling in a language that is no longer on your computer.

User account available hard drive space

I have multiple computers in an office of 20+ that are used for rotating student interns. I have a user account set up for each student, 2 on any one machine. The issue is that an individual user only has roughly 8.5 gb available for hard drive space. The computer has an 80 gb hard drive. I do not want to limit the amount of space a user can have.
Is there an eay way to not have a limitation set for each user.
Thank You in advance

Duane,
That was my understanding as well, but for some reason there seems to be a limitation on the accounts.
Could there be any other explination?

I just ordered a macbook air today and need to know if the 128gb SSD is enough space. I presently have a macbook pro and am using only 30gb hard drive space so, the apple rep said 128 is enough as I do not load much pictures or gaming etc. Also is i5 ok.

I just ordered a macbook air today and need to know if the 128gb SSD is enough space. I presently have a macbook pro and am using only 30gb hard drive space so, the apple rep said 128 is enough as I do not load much pictures or gaming etc. Also is i5 ok.

Id choose the I5 yes, depends on what your usage is going to be,
....your question about "128 gig being enough" begs the question for IDEALIZED USE of your macbook AIr
In the case of a Macbook Air with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. You should never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’.
*Generally, unless you NEED the data at least once every few weeks or once a month,...it really does'nt NEED to be on the SSD of your Macbook Air.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their computers internal HD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your macbook has a HD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your computer to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.
Ive got more APPS than any human should have on my 128gig AIR,..(50 or so),....and 10gig of working data, important files etc etc.
Still have 82gig available....... the entire point is that someone shouldnt consider the Air a "storage device" for tons of pics, music, vids, etc.
*Never consider any computer a data storage device at any time under any circumstance, rather a data creation, sending, and manipulation device. Anyone who thinks data is safe on any computer, even copied upon multiple partitions is making a mistake that will, without fail, strike.
For needs of packing around a LOT of "big data" with your Air in its case..., get a nice 1TB HD for $70, or even a 2TB drive not much bigger.
Perfect 2TB HD, very slim, the "little giant" made by Toshiba (have several of these) $119
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48 /ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1379182740&sr=1-4&keywords=2tb+toshiba
*This one is the BEST external HD available that money can buy:
$75
HGST Touro Mobile 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Touro-Mobile-External-HTOLMX3NA10001ABB/dp/B0062FZ2WS /ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1379185002&sr=1-1&keywords=hitachi+extern a l+hard+drive

When i look at how much hard drive space i have available, my mac says i have 250 gigs used up in backup. I can not find this backup file to delete it and free up the space

When i look at how much hard drive space i have available, my mac says i have 250 gigs used up in backup. I can not find this backup file to delete it and free up the space

OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.
SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.

Firefox eventually consumes all available hard drive space while running

I have 1-2 GB available on my hard drive. When I leave Firefox running for a while (a few hours to a few days, not sure what triggers this behavior), my available hard drive space goes down and down until it gets down to 0. If I quit Firefox, the hard drive space frees up.
I always have multiple windows and tabs open. I'd rather not quit Firefox ever, but I have to to get my HD space back. Sometimes it doesn't seem to happen for a long time, and then it starts happening. I've been rebooting about weekly recently and it hasn't helped any.

I would also have assumed it was just variations in VM usage & application or system memory usage - except that it may show, say, 300 MB available AFTER rebooting, and then, without my launching any applications or using the computer, just immediately rebooting a second time, show 2 GB available.... so somehow the space available isn't be allocated properly it seems to me...
I was also afraid that I was running with too little available space - but have been doing so for months now without these problems. I've got a lot of large video files on the drive, no other drive available to transfer them to, no $$ right now for purchases... and didn't want to delete the videos. I need to transfer more to CD/DVD's but have done all the 'easy' ones that are less than 700 MB already, and have to either waste DVD's or take the time to convert them to versions that will allow the DVD to play on TV also - something I haven't tried yet and gather takes a bit of time. So I've been running along with the drive pretty full.
I would really like to know how to find any 'junk files' like temp files, any duplicates, etc that can be safely deleted, but also not sure how to do that on a mac? So there's this issue, and also the first paragraph, e.g., that it seems to me that somehow the space available allocation isn't being properly shown - is there some way I can check that, find out what is using up the space?

What should the minimum available hard drive space be?

i've got a 250gb hard drive on a macbook pro (march 2009) and only 23.93gb left. how low should i let my hard drive gb go for a smooth/reliable running computer?
thanks for the reply!

I agree with Gregory that keeping 10% of a 1TB drive free isn't necessary, but I certainly wouldn't let a 250GB drive get more than 90% full, and I wouldn't let a 30GB drive get more than 75% full, tops — not that I'll ever have a 30GB drive again.
Among other reasons to keep free space on your hard drive, any time you want to burn a CD or DVD, you need to have room on your hard drive for a disk image the same size as the capacity of the disc you're going to burn. And contrary to what Gregory has concluded from his unscientific experiment, there are many, many applications and operations that will bog down, freeze, quit unexpectedly or kernel-panic the computer if there is insufficient free hard drive space. Yes, having lots of RAM helps, but it isn't a substitute for judicious maintenance of adequate free space on one's hard drive.
Message was edited by: eww

UML295 consuming all available hard drive space

Hello,
I have encountered a problem with multiple people on multiple computers. I am presuming these are some kind of cache files for the enhanced interface, but the device will consume all hard drive space available within %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Verizon
I am attempting to do a sitdown with the user, but I suspect it will be all things normal. I am wondering if anyone has seen this or knows anything. We do use Cisco AnyConnect, but so far, I haven't seen anything documented for behavior compared to the UML290 which required us changing the way the device identified itself to the operating system.

Embalmed
We want to make sure everything is working correctly. What operating system is being used? When did you start seeing that message?
EmmaM_VZW
Follow us on Twitter at @VZWSupport

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.

MY PRECIOUS Hard Drive Space

First time posting a question.
So I have an iBook g4. My problem has to do with my Hard Drive. I am down to my last 2GB of hard drive space --oh no! What do I do to get more hard drive space??? I LOVE DOWNLOADING PODCASTS TO LISTEN TO WHEN I'M RELAXING AND DL MUSIC AND PHOTOS. I LOVE MY MAC and I'm really stupid when it comes to technical computer stuff. But i'm willing to do ANYTHING to keep my files intact. I need some help...
ANY SUGGESTIONS WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATION

Hi Heyitsme and welcome to Apple Discussions.
"First time posting a question".. and a very good one it is too. You are sailing very close to the wind with only 2 GB of free space. !0% of free space is considered to be the absolute bare minimum with 15% or greater considered to be ideal.
In the long term you need to consider getting an external drive to store, perhaps, your iTunes library if it is large, and/or your iPhoto library. A better long term solution would be to, not only have an external for back up, but also have a larger internal drive installed. I believe 250 GB is the current largest size available for iBooks which require a PATA/EIDE 2½" drive. The drives themselves are relatively inexpensive, the installation more expensive unless you feel confident in DIY. Post back if you require more info.
In the short term you need to clear some space if only for the immediate health of your HD, OSX, and your data.
There are a few quick fixes that you can do immediately with no ill effects.
For example, on my iBook, I have removed GarageBand from Applications and its Loops from HD/Library/Application Support. As my iBook only has a combo drive and I'm not into video editing anyway I have trashed iDVD & iMovie. (Not DVD player). I have also trashed preloaded games and World Book, and its associated files.
OS X comes with a vast library of printer drivers, the large proportion of which will never be used by the average user.
Printer drivers are in the HD/Library/Printers folder. You can safely delete any named drivers that you don't have a printer for. For example, if you have a Canon, you can remove Epson, Lexmark, Hewlett Packard & Brother drivers. Epson alone takes up close to 1gb. You can even remove specific drivers from within the manufacturer's folder. For example, if you have an Epson C86 you can safely trash any other specific drivers in the Epson folder like C46, C66 etc. If, at a later date, you buy a printer whose driver you removed they can be added from your install disk, the disk that comes with the printer or downloaded.
A word of warning: More cautious heads than mine advise against messing in the HD/Library, but if you stick to the examples above, i.e. GarageBand loops, World Book and printer drivers you will be OK.
Certainly, I have had no problems with my system after removing those examples.
Check, too, in your music folder. If you have 'Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library' selected in iTunes preferences/Advanced it is possible that you have, say, 'xyz song' in the first level of your Music folder and the same song in Music/iTunes/iTunes Library. If you are sure that you do have 'xyz song' in iTunes, it is safe to delete from 'Music'. The same principle can apply to your Pictures folder and iPhoto Library, but staying with iTunes for a moment, with iTunes open select Edit in the menu bar, then 'Show duplicate songs'. You can trash duplicates if you are sure that they are true duplicates, i.e. exact name, artist and file size. Another little note of caution, neither iTunes nor iPhoto likes having its library messed with from within a Finder window. Resolve duplicates from within the respective application only.
If you are downloading a lot of stuff it is possible that you have a large 'Incomplete' folder built up over time from aborted downloads. This folder can be found in your 'Home' folder. It is perfectly safe to remove any and all files from this folder.
Downloaded applications can be a cause of wasted space. An application is usually downloaded as a .DMG (Disk Image). Once the app is installed in your Applications folder there is no necessity to keep the .DMG, although if it is a 'paid for' app it would be wise to back it up to an external/burn to a CD before removing it from your internal. Sometimes apps are downloaded as .zip files, leaving two largely redundant duplicates of the same thing. Again, back up one or the other file type to another medium before trashing if the app is paid for or difficult to find again.
Some excellent advice has been posted by ~JB~ , with corresponding words of caution.
Edit: The application Whatsize, linked to in ~JB~'s advice above, used to be a free application. It is now shareware, though I believe it is still free to use on smaller drives such as yours. You can get similar information using Finder, however.
Open a new Finder window, select Command (⌘) 2, for list view, then Command (⌘) J. Check the 'This window only' button and the 'Size' and 'Calculate all Sizes' boxes. Wait a few moments while it 'calculates'. You should be able to see which folders are taking up the most space. DO NOT REMOVE OR MESS WITHIN THE "SYSTEM" FOLDER or, with the exception of GarageBand loops and printers, the Library folder.
Dr Smoke has some advice here too.
Last but by no means least, when you have finished dumping your unwanted stuff in the trash, don't forget to empty it. You haven't regained the space until you do
…and definitely last this time: If in doubt leave it alone and ask!
Have fun,
Adrian

Tally problem: Hard drive space doesn't add up.

I'm trying to work out how my laptop computes it's 80Gb hard drive space so that i can work out what to get rid of.
If I work down the icons in the left of my finder and 'get info'
it reads:
desktop 3.7 GB
applications 6.6GB
home 43.88 GB (made up of all the others plus 9.81 GB library space plus some Kb's for folders)
documents 5.36 GB
movies 9.02GB
music 14.64GB
pictures1.29 Gb
There is 2.47 GB available
Now no matter what i do, my figures tally everything up to around 53GB. and not the 74.4GB it says i have used.
Any suggestions of where i'm going wrong?
powerbook G4 15" Mac OS X (10.3.9) 2GB memory

Hi, dabbla, and welcome to Apple Discussions. If your Powerbook thinks there is only 2.47GB of free space available on your 80GB hard drive — whether or not it's right — you need to start removing things immediately, while you still can. Don't try to problem-solve or achieve any deeper understanding first: you are in a near-emergency situation that could become a dire data-loss disaster at any moment.
If you can't make any more rational decisions about what to trash first, start with whatever is already backed up elsewhere. First to go should be anything of which you have two or more backups, then things that you've backed up once and tested the backups to be sure they're good. If that doesn't free up at least 7.5 more GB of free space, trash any very large applications or application-related sample, tutorial, or template folders that you can reinstall from original installer discs after the crisis is past. You want to be looking for files and folders that are 100MB or more in size; discarding little 3MB and 10MB files or folders will never get you where to need to go.
You must maintain at least 8GB, and preferably about 12GB, of free space on an 80GB drive at all times for trouble-free operation. With as little free space as you have now, your OS is desperately short of space for its swapfiles, your Powerbook is being slowed down significantly, and you are at serious risk of crashes and data loss as your OS, applications and documents compete for the available disk space. You may be completely unable to burn DVDs or even CDs.
It's possible that you have some directory damage that is causing your Powerbook to misreport the amount of free space that is available, but you may not be able to repair the damage until you've freed up some more, because what the OS believes may matter more right now than what is actually true. As soon as you've freed up several more GB of space on your drive, boot to your Panther installer Disk 1, open Disk Utility from the Installer menu, and run the Repair Disk routine, repeatedly if necessary, until it gives you two successive "Appears OK" verdicts. You may then find that more free space is available than was reported before. If so, good.
After that, download Onyx or MacJanitor and use it to run the Daily, Weekly and Monthly Background Maintenance (cron) tasks. That should free up a bit more space and put your house in good order. You can then proceed to back up all your unbacked-up documents, if any, to other media — a FireWire hard drive is far and away the best choice. Documents that are dormant or retired and don't need to be kept ready at hand on the Powerbook can also be backed up to CDs or DVDs (so you have redundant backups of them) before you delete them from the PB's hard drive.

Where's my missing hard drive space?

I posted earlier about this, it may be a bit off topic but if anyone can offer a clue, I would appreciate it.
I got my win 7 upgrade and was waiting until vista started giving me headaches or the win7 service pack1 came out to upgrade...vista got me to upgrade today and I have to admit it was much less painful than i anticipated.
My question is about the missing hard drive space on my Idea center K230 on the box and on the side of the comp it claims a 640 HD (it claims in small print that up to 18gb may be used for the service partition) I questioned this when i first got it and even after deleting all the preloaded crap it was still saying 540 available out of 580GB....then I read that Lenovo has a huge partition for backup. So when I do my upgrade to win 7- 64 bit, I do a clean install and delete the smaller partition and reformat and expand the larger but before installing the new OS it says I have 596 available, so where the hell is the other 44GB of hard drive...did Lenovo rip us off and put 600GB hard drives in the K230's or is there a hidden partition still left that I cant find?
I am running everything off of my 596GB C: drive, I have my virus stuff and video card extras loaded, everything from the upgrade and 21 available patches and new drivers for most of my stuff....right now I am at at 575gb available and if i can ever find a printer driver that works I will create a backup point or disc from there, whatever win 7 allows. I never wanted the Lenovo one button back up and thought it was stupid to put a big glowing button on the keyboard that wipes your system back to when it came out of the box...I had nightmares of someone getting curious and going "what does this button do?"
.I notice I have a program files folder and a program files (x86) folder with a bunch of redundant files. what's the deal with this is Lenovo still hiding a backup program (maybe in that hidden partition?) that fills my hard drive twice as fast or is there a purpose for the file copies?
Any info on the above questions would be appreciated, and for those of you just looking for upgrade info I have good news, when you finally get your win7 upgrade disc it is the easiest windows installation ever, almost copmpletely automated, and very fast. So far the only sticking point is finding a printer driver, but I have 3 printers i can try, maybe one is supported.

Hi wise2u!
You can read all the details about how storage manufacturers use multiples of 1000 to measure disk space, and Windows reports it in multiples of 1024, and there is some overhead for Windows, or you can just use this rule of thumb from wikipedia:
A general rule of thumb to quickly convert the manufacturer's hard disk capacity to the standard Microsoft Windows formatted capacity is 0.93*capacity of HDD from manufacturer for HDDs less than a terabyte and 0.91*capacity of HDD from manufacturer for HDDs equal to or greater than 1 terabyte.
0.93 * 640GB = 595GB, which is about what you're seeing.
I don't work for Lenovo. I'm a crazy volunteer!

What is using my hard drive space on my macbook pro

Something is using all my hard drive space and I cannot figure out what. Yesterday I had 120GB and now I have 120MB free and got a disk warning. I have noticed this past week that my space has been eaten up. My Mac Book Pro is 2 months old and I have not put any big or fancy programmes on it as I am still getting used to this being my first Mac. One of the selling points for getting a Mac is I heard its programmes took a lot less space. My previous PC that I had for 2 years had a 130GB hard drive and I had 20GB free when I gave it away. I cannot believe I have used all my 500GB hard drive space when I have only installed a few programmes on this one such as Notebook, Pages, and some accounting software. I cannot seem to find details of where the space is being used. Please help.

Mr_Joe wrote:
My Mac Book Pro is 2 months old
I cannot seem to find details of where the space is being used. Please help.
Empty the trash!
Where did my Disk Space go?
Slimming your hard drive
Seven ways to free up drive space
OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.
SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $.99 - FreeSpace shows you how much space is available on all local, connected, and network drives with a single click.
You are still under warranty plus you still have 90 days of free phone tech support. Take advantage of it before it runs out!

How do I delete Photo Stream photos that are taking up hard drive space in my Masters folder, but not actually appearing in any event, or on the interface at all?

A couple months ago, I activated photo stream using my apple ID. I was under the impression that all the photos uploaded to my photo stream would only use server space on icloud and wouldn't actually utilize disk space, or at the most, the option was available to only download specific photos to my hard drive. My hope was that I could upload the photos to a specific drive, and view the uploaded thumbs or low-res comps on any device as a reference.
This is not the case.
What I have found is that iphoto has been automatically downloading any and all photos uploaded to my photo stream. Not just the thumbnails, the entire thumbnail + all resolutions. I shoot RAW photos so in my case, the original averages about 15-25MB per photo.
I have been uploading directly to an iphoto library on an external hard drive specifically designated for handling all my RAW high-res images.
What has been happening is all those RAW files are also being uploaded directly to my iphoto library on my iMac and eating up memory which I cannot reclaim, even after deactivating my Photo Stream in preferences. We're talking almost 100 GB of memory is tied up right now.
I don't want to just go in and start deleting files and folders in my Masters folder, since I have heard this will break iphoto, but the photos in my photostream do not show up in any event and I need to reclaim the hard drive space.
How can I safely delete them?

If the files are loose inside the iPhoto library package here's one way to get them out:
1 - open your library, select all of the photos in the library and add a unique keyword, XXXX, to all of them.
2 - Rebuild the library with iPhoto Library Manager as follows:
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
1 - download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.>Click on the Add Library button,
2 - select the library you want to add from those in the selection window.
3 - make sure that in the rebuild window the checkbox "Scavange orphaned photos" is checked.
4 - now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the Library ➙ Rebuild Library menu option
5 - in the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed. Click on the Create button.
Note 1: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost.
Note 2: Your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.
3 - open the library, create a smart album with the criterial "Keyword is not XXXX".
4 - the smart album will include those photos that were not visible in your original library. Select them and use the key combination of Command+Option+Delete to move them to the iPhoto Trash bin.
5 - empty the iPhoto Trash bin via the iPhoto ➙ Empty iPhoto Trash Bin menu option.
6 - empty the Trash bin in the Dock to remove the files from your hard drive completely.
Be sure to read Note 1 above. You can use the new library without your books, slideshow, etc. and it will not contain those errant files. Of course delete the original library if the new one is satisfactory.

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 short-only 55GB available of 60GB

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for