Help!  I'm running out of space for my operating system.

I keep getting a message that my operating system is running out of space. I have 1.05 GB free. I'm not a novice with Mac, but do know Windows better. I would be happy to clean up my disk, but am not sure how to do it or if I can find a way to expand my memory.....
Any help?

louisak,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
A startup hard drive showing 1 GB free on an computer running a flavor of Unix (which OS X is) can indeed be effectively running out of room. Unix makes heavy use of scratch and swap files on the hard drive; the amount of needed swap space varies depending on how much real RAM you have and how manu programs you run concurently, but 256 to 512 MB swap spac eon disk is common (this Mac currently shows 256 MB for 3 swap files in /private/var/vm even through only 72 MB of that is in use). In addition, if you burn -R or -RW optical discs, you'll need at least as much free space as the size of the dissc to allow creation of the temporary image file used in the burning, about 700 MB for CD-R and 4.7 GB for DVD-R. As a ballpark rule-of-thumb, minimum free hard drive space should be at least 1 GB (no optical disc burning), 2 GB (CD-R burning), or 5 GB (DVD-R burning), so the warning message you're seeing is expected.
It's critical that you free up space on the hard drive as soon as possible. In the interim, close out any programs you're not immediately using and try yo run no more than one program at a time. If a Unix computer does run out of hard drive space, it can be blocked from normal startup and leave you looking at booting into single-user mode to manually clear enough files to start up again.
There are a number of ways to free up hard drive space, depending on your comfort level rooting around the OS X System, how valuable your files are, and your budget. There are several utilities that can help you ID unneeded large files, but I'd be hesitant to download anything onto your computer until you free up at least 2 GB to work with. Start by going through your user data and trashing files you don't really need.
If you use Firefox, check the ~/Users/ [username]/ Library/ Application Support/ Firefox/ Profiles/ [text].default/ folder for excess backup bookmarks files (bookmarks-##.html); thise can take up about 1 MB each and you don't really need more than the latest backup (when I last checked my work Mac, there were about 200 backup bookmarks files, so that's a fair chunck of drive space).
Continue with the tips at The X-Lab's Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk. The easiest way by far to free up space on the startup drive is to add an external Firewire drive and move your iTunes / iPhoto libraries and other user date to that drive, then delete the originals from the startup hard drive. See How to move the iPhoto Library Folder to a new location and Moving your iTunes Music folder. The localization tips in the X-Lab link can also free up a significant amount of space, but pay heed to the warnings about not deleting things unless you know what it is you're deleteing, especially when it comes to System-level items.
If you've ever experienced a crash, especially while tring to burn a CD-R or DVD-R, there may be normally temporary files left behind on the hard drive. You can use a utility like OnyX and use it to clear temporary files, logs and caches and (especially) core files. (In Unix, a core file is a snapshot of the system at the time of a crash and is useful for code debugging, but unless you have a debugger installed the core files just take up space.)
Another useful utility is Whatsize, which lets you check file sizes. Use this to look for files ending in .tmp and the like. If you ID files you suspect can be trashed but aren't sure, post back witht he file's name and check in the Discussions for anyone who can say "sure, that's safe to trash" or "no, leave it alone". when trashing files, you can move things to the Trash but hold off emptying the Trash for a while to check that the computer operates normally.

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