How to make free space on your start up disk

Hey!
I'm experiencing some problems with my MacBook Pro. Everytime I'm trying to save something or downloading something, it say my start up disk is almost full. And sometimes it tells me I have to quit applications to make space.
How can I make free space, I mean, I can't have used all the memory on my computer already, I've only had it for a year. I'm guessing I've got a file that's taking up a lot of space. How can I identify it? And how can I make free space on my start up disk?
Thanks for the help,
leozinho2r

Download and use either WhatSize or Omni Disk Sweeper to see what files are filling your drive. Trash them if you don't need them.

Similar Messages

How do i create space in my start up disk on mac book pro?

how do i create space in my start up disk on mac book

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.
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.

HT1338 how can make a room from my start up disk in in mac pro

how can make a room from my start up disk in in mac pro

Only you can decide what you want to delete to free up space on your PB, Personally I think you'll find 17 GB won't go very far when you start to add video.
Consider an external drive. Don't forget if you let your free space fall below 10% of the total size of the drive you will risk corrupting your directory structure or causing other damage which may result in a loss of data.

HT201364 how do i remove space from my start up disk

How do i remove space from my start up disk?

Do you mean "make" space on your HD?
Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

I received the following message while i was on my macbook air "you do not have enough space in your start up disk - you must delete some files"-restarted; only got startup noise then blank screen. turned off tried to turn on no noise no screen load. thx

i received the following message while i was on my macbook air "you do not have enough space in your start up disk - you must delete some files"-restarted; only got startup noise then blank screen. i waited for a few minutes to see if it would load - nothing just the lit up screen but nothing loaded - held power button it asked did i really want to turn off - i selected shutdown -turned off and left it off for awhile tried to turn on no noise no screen load. the same lit up screen but nothing loading. please help thx in advance if anyone can offer some suggestions

You can get there from here (booting normally); it just may take you a few steps to do it.
If the disk is almost full and the system won't boot then sometimes it will boot in Safe Mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US
Empty the trash after it boots.
Then for hints on how to free disk/SSD storage see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5872318?tstart=0
If the Safe Mode boot does not do the trick then you can install OS X on an external hard disk, boot from that, and then delete files. You can also reach the disk via Target Mode. A third option is to take it to an Apple store where they can do a network boot and help you remove some files.

How do I fix the msg, "Your Start up Disk is Full"?

How do I fix the message, "Your Start Up Disk is Full" on my 4 yr old macbook?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
See Lion's Storage Display.
You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
See Where did my Disk Space go?.
See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.

My Macbook won't boot up because there isn't enough free space for my start up disk. It's now stuck on a blue screen. How am I meant to delete files to free up space if I can't access the computer?

My Macbook won't boot up because there sin't enough free space to run the startup disk. My Macbook now won't go past the blue screen so exactly how am I meant to be able to delete files if I can't access the computer?

Do you have a bootable backup?
What operating system are you running? If OS X 10.6 or lower, boot from your original OS X DVD or a retail OS X DVD and then delete files as needed. Your goal should be to get to 10% of your disk capacity free.
If you have OS X 10.7 Lion or 10.8 Mountain Lion, you don't have many choices in recovery mode (boot holding the command and r keys down).
If you have a FireWire or Thunderbolt connection, you can try target disk mode with another mac.
If none of those work, perhaps your local Apple store can help with a bootable external drive.

How to make more space avilable on strt-up disk?

I've just started burning DVDs on iDVD, using movies I have produced in iMovie and then transferred, via the Media Browser. But when I come to burn the finished product I am severely limited. The 'help" article informs me "be sure you have at least twice as much free space as your project uses available on your hard disk ... eg. if your project uses 4GB, you need at least 8GB of free space on your hard disk. I checked via control-click onto my hard disk icon how much space I have. The capacity is 148GB of which only 938MB is available! Does this mean I can never burn a DVD with more than 469 MB content (i.e 50% of the total)? If so, how can I make more space available on my start-up disk?

You could free-up nearly 2 GB by deleting two "bloatware" items:
/Applications/Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive
/Applications/iWork '08 ... (the 'free trial' version)
On my system, they're 1001568 KB and 701940 KB, respectively.
If you don't use them, iWeb.app and GarageBand.app are also
very large (345344 KB and 187056 KB). If you delete them, you
can always restore them later from the install DVDs.
Looby

I bought a new Macbook Pro with Retina (13") a few months back and all of a sudden saw my opened programs got paused with a message that I should free space in my start up disk. Any help?

My opened programs got paused and I got a message to free up space in my start up disk. It asked me to quit some apps. I checked and found that I did not heve lot of apps opened. How do I troubleshoot this?

How much free space do you have on the flash storage device? Go under the Apple menu to "About This Mac..." then "More Info..." and look at the storage tab. Post a screenshot of you Storage tab in a reply here (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4391).
Should look something like this:
Clinton

HT201364 How do I clear space on my start up disk?

My computer keeps telling me that my start up disk is almost full, I've tried to delete things, and that didn't work, but how do I even get to the start up disk?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6047
http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5142
Disk Inventory X: http://www.derlien.com/
Grand Perspective: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

How do I make more space on my start up disk

I am getting a message that says my start up disk is almost full and to make space on it? I don't know what that means or how to do it.
Can someone help me - I'm not computer savvy...so break it down gently.
Thank you in advance.
Teresa

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. 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. 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.
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 you remove files from your start up disk without deleting any files?, How do you remove files from your start up disk without deleting any files?

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone knew how to remove files from the start up disk without deleting any files?
I am unable to add any more photos and even download the latest updates because the start up disk is full....
Is it possible to move the files off the start up disk without deleting them?
I would appreciate feedback,
Thanks
Sammy

Well you can move them to an external drive but this will delete them from the internal drive. Which is what you have to do to free up disk space.

How do i create space on the start up disk by moving pictures from i photo but keeping them readily available

how do i get pictures off of my start up disk but in a way that i can recll them into iphoto

You will first of all need an external hard drive. There are lots of them available. Search MacSales or NewEgg for one that suits your needs. Get one that is bigger than you think you'll need.
Once you have an external drive, format it using Disk Utility (in the /Applications/Utilities folder) if it has not already been formatted to work with a Mac.
Copy your Pictures folder (which should contain your iPhoto library) to the new hard drive.
Launch iPhoto while holding down the option key on your keyboard. It will ask you to select an iPhoto library. Select the library on the external hard drive. Confirm that all your pictures are there and you can work with them.
Drag the iPhoto library that is in your Pictures folder on the internal hard drive to the Trash.
Empty the Trash.
You should now have a bunch more space on your hard drive.
If you have not been backing up your data religiously, start using the external hard drive to do so (be sure to get a nice BIG drive so you have plenty of room for backups.) Also realize that since your iPhoto library is now stored on the external drive, backing it up again to that drive is not particularly useful. I suggest burning all your important photos to DVDs. If the photo library is too big for that, get another external hard drive and back up to that. Data security is important.

How do I clear space on the start up disk?

not enough room on start up disk what do i do?

Allan Eckert wrote:
…found that OmniDiskSweeper to be a useful tool to find out for sure exactly where the the files and folders are that are taking up the most space.
this is just 'useful' if you know what to do with that info...
examples:
you'll find tons of huge 'Help'-files, well hidden in the libraries ... would you erase them?
you'll find tons of browser-cache files … would you erase them?
you'll find tons of 'cpi'-files (if you archive your SDcards)… would you erase them?
The expert can do a lot of 'improvements', but the average user is simply overwhelmed
MacOS as a Unix has a lot of 'self-healing' interanlly (as an examples: the famous cron-jobs), and there's little need to trigger those manually ...
OP asked to free disk-space - a start is to drag the obvious ones (video, pics, music) externally. the erasing of the few kB, a Korean/Danish/Maori/… location doesn't have any noticeable effect....
(excuses to an Korean, Danish, Maori forum members being here abused as 'exotic'! )

How do I clear space on my start up disk?

I want to install new OS. I am told I must clear space on Startup disk. What is and where is this on my McBook Air?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion's Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

How to make free space on your start up disk

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