How to clear space on hard drive

my 80g hard drive has 6g left. i thought my itunes library was culprit but it only shows 25g of space in library. how do i determine what is using so much space? is there any way besides using "get info" on every folder? i only use word, excel, safari, mail and itunes consistantly and idon't know of any large files.
i am getting an external HD anyway.
thanks

What is "so big"? Your user Library folder may have lots of cache data that is safe to delete. Anything in app support is likely to be required by applications. Delete that at your own risk.

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

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

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

How do you clear space on hard drive

How do you clear space on your hard drive on a mac book pro?

Hope this helps.
1. Empty Trash.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
2. Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
    Select "Library" from the dropdown.
    Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
    Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Empty Trash. Restart.
3. Repair Disk
    Steps 1 through 7
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836
4. For more on this and very helpful tips:
    http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
    http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html

Trying to locate a large backup file to clear space on hard drive

A while ago I backed up my Mac Book Pro to an external hard drive through time machine. I purchased a Time Capsale and when I went to change my backup data to that device I stored the 300+ gb of back up on my computer as a just in case place. Everything worked out and I a trying to clear that space up on my computer, but I can not seem to locate it. As you can see in the picture below, I am being told that I have a ton of space being taken up by back up data. Any ideas on how i can locate it? FYI, I have already used omni sweep and cannot locate it as well as created a smart folder, which I used to try a narrow down files larger than 1 gb and nothing showed up. Much thanks!

This may find it. I obviously can't replacte the problem on my system disk but I can can guess how to find it on yours.
Click on the system disk image (Macintosh HD) on your desktop and the command-F. Tell it so search on "This Mac". Search for Backups.backupdb. Then option-click Show in Enclosing Folder.

Can i Move 20,000 Photo's to either iCloud or External Drive to clear space on hard drive

Hi
We operate older Mac (abt 6 yrs) with OS X 10.7.5
Getting message "startup disc is full".
We have Twenty Thousand (20,000) photo's on it.
Can we move them either to iCloud or to a external hard drive to clear space.
If so how & is it easy to acces & work with them
Thanks

After you move the library, you should seriously consider getting a drive to back up your library. All hard drives fail sooner or later and you do not want to lose 20,000 photos....

Clearing Space on hard drive

How do you clear up your mac book pro? Mine has been running really slow lately and i think its because I have a lot of things i dont need on it. Also how do you download things onto the applications folder and not on the hard drive?

If you want to look at what is taking up a lot of space on your hard drive (or any particular folder on your hard drive), I recommend using Grant Perspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/). It's a small utility that will visually display the large folder/files as large colored boxes. A very cool little app.
The Applications folder is on the hard drive. Usually when you download applications from the Internet, they will be placed in your Downloads folder. If the download is a Disk Image (.dmg file), then you'll want to run the disk image, and then drag the application from the Disk Image into your Applications folder. Be sure to read the README files or installation instructions for any application you download.

Putting photos etc into trash does not clear space on hard drive

When I move photos etc into the trash there is no increase in available space on the hard drive.

If you've installed third-party software called "Disk Drill," I suggest you remove it according to the developer's instructions. If you prefer to keep the software, refer to the developer for support. Otherwise, see below.
For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. 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—not the mythical 10%, 15%, or any other percentage. 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.
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.

Deleting Originals to Clear Space on Hard Drive

Hello!
I am undertaking the endeavor of going through the 20,000 pictures I have stored on my MacBook/first external hard drive. I am deleting the unnecessary images and am planning on exporting the ones I want to keep to another external hard drive. My question is: once I've exported the images I want to keep, can I then delete the original images taking up space on my hard drive? If I have the export (JPG) but not the original file (RAW), will it show up as "image is missing" or cause some type of pathway problem? I'm hoping to keep this as streamlined as possible but also want to preserve the integrity of my images.
Thanks so much for any help you can offer!
Beka

Thank you all for your advice! You are probably confused because I'M confused - so thanks for bearing with me!
So, it sounds like deleting anything would be a bad solution. Jimtron, I think your second point ("If you want to keep images, but move them to a different drive, you can move them in Lightroom (which can be a little awkward, but that way you don't have to reset any paths). Or, if there are entire folders that you want to move to a separate drive, it shouldn't be a problem to move the folder to another drive, and then tell Lightroom where that folder now resides.") will be my best bet. My new questions are as follows:
I'll need to move entire folders to a separate drive. How do I tell Lightroom where that folder now resides?
I'm considering moving older editions of Lightroom (2 & 3) to a separate drive as well, and only keeping the current edition on my laptop hard drive. How do I navigate that without going crazy and making a mess of everything? Is there a good tutorial for how to do this so that I don't end up with all of my photos "missing"?
Once everything is moved and in order (and I regain my sanity), can I then do what Silkrooster advised and compress the original files so that they don't take up quite as much space?
Thank you in advance!
Beka (OP)

How to make space on Hard Drive for videos?

I recently tried to download the first season on "Lost" on my 60GB video iPod, but I ran into problems when trying to download these b/c of the space needed on my hard drive. Besides the obvious answer, "erase other files on your computer," is there anything else I can do to fix this?
Thanks!
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4)

Well, if you are running out of space on your hard drive, the only thing you can do to free up space is to erase something from your hard drive. So, no, there's nothing else you can do to fix this.
Find some stuff you don't need anymore, and either delete it for good or burn it to CD first. If you don't want to delete anything, invest in an external firewire hard drive (they're very cheap, and allow you to do a full backup of your system in addition to having extra storage space... You are backing up your computer, aren't you?).

Safest/Easiest way to clear space on hard drive

I'm using a MacBook with OS X 10.5.8, and have recently been finding it running more and more slowly. I've used 80GB of the HD, and have 30GB free, which I didn't think would be a problem, but I figured I could probably free up some space and see if that improved things.
Looking for suggestions about the easiest/safest way to do that - I don't want to delete anything crucially important by mistake. I can probably shift a lot of my photos and music onto a USB stick, but is there a program I can run to find other things on the HD that I don't use and could delete?
I've read about something you can run that deletes unnecessary language packages, but I've got some Adobe programs installed and I think it can cause problems with them.
Many thanks in advance!

The reason your laptop is running slow isn't because of the space on the hard drive. It's everything being stored off the hard drive. Unfortunately, Snow Leopard was the first OS that actually had an application for defragmentation. For whatever reason, they thought their "superior" OS didn't need such a silly thing. But now they do. And anyone who doesn't buy Snow Leopard is screwed.
I have an external hard drive myself, and frequently reformat my computer just to keep it running optimally. I believe there is a private software company that has a Defrag for Mac. It's called iDefrag by Coriolis Systems, and you can download a free trial, but you really can't do what you need to do with it in trial. The full version is $29.95 and you can find it here: http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php
You can also read what Mac has to say about defragmentation: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1634 but they're underexaggerating the issue by a mile.

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

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

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

How can I erase My hard drive. Disk utility only gives me the option of erase free space. I have 27in iMac with Lion and 12 gb ram.

How can I erase my hard drive? Disk utility only gives me the option to erase free space.
Thanks for any assistance.

Drive Preparation for Lion
1. 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. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU to return to the main menu.
5. Select Reinstall Lion then click on the Continue button. You need an active network connection in order to download the Lion software.

How do I free up hard drive space and turn off file vault?

How do I free up hard drive space on my Macbook so I can

You guess is wrong, Time Machine can back up with FileVault turned on.
You are seriously short on free space. You need to delete or move enough files to increase your free space by at least 10 GB. Your movie, video and music files would make good candidates for gaining the most free spoace quickly.
Once you get the free space you should repair the disk by booting from the Install DVD and starting Disk Utility. I am not talking about repair permissions here either.
The reason to repair your disk is that running the free space so low has greatly increased the chances for disk corruption. If you don't do the corruption will only get worst cause weird problems for you until the system stops.
Allan

How do I use external hard drive

how do I use external hard drive and Photos? I keep getting a msg that there is not enough free space on your photo library volume - i even bought 500Gb of space on iCloud.... that didn't even work please help

1. Drag the library to a volume formatted as Mac OS Extended, launch Photos with the Option key held down, select Other Library, and choose it. Alternatively, drag it to the Photos icon in the Dock.
2. iCloud storage space is separate from that on the computer.
(126243)

How to back up a hard drive with Time Machine

Yesterday I left my MacBook Pro at the airport security check. I called today and they told me it was gone, probably stolen. Since I didn't want my files or data to fall into the wrong hands, I used iCloud and logged on to my account, found my MacBook device, and selected Erase Mac. Lo and Behold, as fate would have it, I received a call from airport security 15 minutes later that they had in fact found it. Unfortunately, my call to Apple Support indicated that once Erase Mac is selected, it's like pushing the launch button on a nuke. It cannot be undone. Further conversations revealed that in order to not completetly lose all my files, I need to back up my MacBook to another hard drive prior to connecting to WiFi.
So, here's my plan. I have another iMac at my house with approx 500G of available hard drive space. My plan is once Fed Ex delivers my MacBook, to use Time Machine to back it up. I've never done this before. I have a FireWire cable for this task.
Is my thinking correct for the following steps:
1. Open MacBook in a Non Wifi environment.
2. Click on Time Machine Preferences
3. Connect my MacBook Pro with my iMac using FireWire
4. Select the Hard Drive from iMac as the source.
Will there be additional instructions then to follow?
How will I know when the back up is complete?
After the back up is done, do I then open the MacBook up in Wifi and allow Erase Mac to run?
If yes, then how do I transfer the hard drive back to MacBook?
I know this is a long post, but I want to ensure I'm following the process completely. Thanks,
Scott

Just turn off your wireless router until you can run Time Machine to backup your Mac notebook.
Or remove the drive from the system and connect it to another Mac and copy all your files off it. But again it would be best to disable any and all Wifi systems in your house before you do that.
Not sure but there may be a way to turn off the Wipe command and or it is only issued once. Never had to use it so I'm uncertain on how it actually works.

How to clear space on hard drive

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