How to move a file when startup disk is full?
My macbook start up disk is full, apparently. I've tried deleting things and nothing has worked. I need to safely get a video file, in mp4 from Iphoto onto a usb drive. Iphoto will not let me put the file on desktop or move anywhere. What do I do? Help! Please someone.
I have mac OS X 10.6 with 2gb memory.
Howdy sunny_93,
One of the more common causes of a full disk on your Mac is failing to empty the Trash. This is needed to recover the space taken by items in the Trash. See this article -
Mac OS X 10.6: Removing files and folders from your computer
Another possibility would be to move music or photo files in applications such as iTunes or iPhoto to an external hard drive. See this article for iTunes -
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - Apple Support
iPhoto '11: Move your iPhoto library to a new location
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L
Similar Messages
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Unable to update software or upload pics from SD card-how do I remove files from startup disk? Please help!
Hello Smile_333
The article below will assist with finding things and help increase the hard drive space for your computer. The best way is to have an external hard drive to copy things to if you do not want to delete and loose things.
OS X Mountain Lion: Increase disk space
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Regards,
-Norm G. -
HT3680 how to free up space if startup disk is full
How do I free up space when the startup disk is full?
O Trejo, greetings;
I am not the Wizard but a mere citizen of Oz who wears green tinted glasses as all others do.
DaisyDisk appears to perform a similar function as OmniDiskSweeper which I still prefer due probably due to my familiarity with it.
I am not familiar with OSX Server, so I am off the hook on this one. If you go to the OSX Server forum, there will be forum members who will be able to address your query. This is the link:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/servers_enterprise_software/os_x_server
If you are really nice to them, they may give you a Dog Yummy.
Ciao. -
My mac book startup disk is full and when I start it, it give me a blank blue screen. I have tried the shift upon start
and I started in safe mode, and it gave me the stars screen. How can I delete files to fix the problem1. Start up in Safe Mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11212
2. Empty Trash.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10677
3. 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.
4. Delete old iOS Devices Backup.
iTunes > Preferences > Devices
Highlight the old Backups , press “Delete Backup” and then “OK”.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
5. Re-index Macintosh HD
System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409 -
When starting the computer, I get a grey screen and following status: your startup disk is full. How can I still enter (in order to free-up some space)?
Simple way to make HDD free space is delete files you don't need anymore.
Or get bigger drive and external HDD case, then:
1) install bigger HDD in external drive case.
2) connect external drive and format and mount it with Disk Utility.
3) make clone with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!(source drive is internal HDD, target drive is external one).
4) install external bigger drive into your Macbook Pro.
In the cace if your're using Mac Pro:
1) get bigger HDD and install it in drive bay of Mac Pro.
2) format and mount it with Disk Utility.
3) make clone with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!(source drive is old HDD, target drive is new one).
4) Select boot drive to new bigger one. -
My startup disk is full: how do I clean it up? Simply deleting some files does not help.
I get the message that my startup disk is full. It says to delete some files to make more space; but after deleting some files, this message will reappear again after a while. What else can be done?
I hope you haven't removed anything that involves the system.
I hope you haven't remove things willy nilly, either.
Here are some general tips to keep your Mac's hard drive trim and slim as possible
You should never, EVER let a conputer hard drive get completely full, EVER!
With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.
If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.
Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.
Have you emptied your Mac's Trash icon in the Dock?
If you use iPhoto, iPhoto has its own trash that needs to be emptied, also.
If you store images in other locations other than iPhoto, then you will have to weed through these to determine what to archive and what to delete.
If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive to disc, flash drives or external hard drive, older emails you want to save.
Look through your other Mailboxes and other Mail categories to see If there is other mail you can archive and/or delete.
STAY AWAY FROM DELETING ANY FILES FROM OS X SYSTEM FOLDER!
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive to disc, flash drives, ext. hard drives or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Look in your Applications folder, if you have applications you haven't used in a long time, if the app doesn't have a dedicated uninstaller, then you can simply drag it into the OS X Trash icon. IF the application has an uninstaller app, then use it to completely delete the app from your Mac.
To find other large files, download an app called Omni Disk Sweeper.
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
When you install and launch it, let it do its initial automatic tests, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run the maintenance tabs that let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.
Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.
move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
Good Luck! -
I have a MacBook Pro that is telling me my startup disk is full. I left for 30 days and when I came back to use it, it tells me that the disk was full out of 500 GB. I don't have that much on it and it was perfectly fine when I left. I Verified the disk through disk utility and it told me it had issues so then I repaired it and it said everything is fine. It still says the hard drive is full. How do I fix this problem. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Have a read here Where did my Disk Space go?
Stefan -
I Keep getting "your startup disk is full" ..... "You need to make more space available on your startup disk by deleting file..." If I can't have an acess, how can I delete files. Please help..
That means the hard drive of your computer is full, and you don't have enough free space on your computer, to do what you are trying to do.
You need to clear up space on your computer.
If you hard drive is full, check the following places to ensure they are not holding unwanted data.
- your trash can in the dock
- if you use iPhoto, your trash in iPhoto - launch iPhoto, and select trash in the left hand column. iPhoto has it's own trash, and is often overlooked
- your download folder - finder / home user / downloads - every time you download something, it stores it here. This is often overlooked as well
- do you have more than one user on the computer? If you do, ensure they are needed. If not, delete them, and the contents of their home folders
If you hard drive is very full, you may want to consider the following:
- putting in a newer larger hard drive - (call you local apple store for prices on this)
- deleting data off your computer
- moving data to an external drive - (iPhoto Libraries, iTunes Libraries or iMovie events, as they are the biggest space hogs) -
Startup disk is full and the laptop can't operate. How I remove files for it to work?
Startup disk is full and the laptop can't operate. How I remove files for it to work?
Can you turn on the Macbook Pro?
If yes, can you see the hard drive icon?
Have you emptied the trash? -
My Macbook air keeps getting a message saying that the startup disk is full. I don't have picture, music, or movies on it. Im not sure whats wrong with it.
The first step is to check and see how much space really is there. From the desktop right click on the drive in the upper right corner (at least it's there by default) and select "Get Info" to see how much space it reports as free.
It's not just media files that eat up disk space, though they are often a major contributor. Do you happen to be running one of the virtual machine programs (Parallels or VMWare Fusion)? When you create a guest drive there you normally have a fairly decent amount of disk space dedicated to it and that can fill the drive.
As well, a quick fix that may buy you some time is to empty the trash if you've not done so recently. Click on the trash folder in your dock and then in the window that comes up select the option to empty the trash.
If you can free up some space, there are programs that will help you find what files and directories are using disk space. I've used Space Gremlin (in the App store) for that sort of thing, though there others. If you run that sort of utlity you'll get some idea about what is really eating up the drive space. -
Startup disk is full when I already deleted everything?
For a while I've been getting pop ups saying my startup disk is full and so I deleted mostly everything. To this day I still get the pop ups when I swear there is literally nothing on my macbook. I checked how much space I actually have and I have just 1.17 gb/59.81 gb... I have no idea how this could possibly happen when I have deleted everything.
There is 0 pictures, 0 movies, 0 downloads and 0 music because I have literally deleted everything. How do I only have 1.17 gb left? My trash is also empty too. Apparently "Other" is taking up 41 gb on my macbook... What is this? I have no idea what is taking up all the space on my macbook when I don't have anything except the things I really need.
Someone help me... I need actual space on my laptop...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. -
My mac air says " startup disk is full".How to solve ???
My Mac air has a message during starting the computer and says that startup disk if full. In the composition of my hard there are 120 GB used space on other parts, which I have not understand where is these files.
First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. Then reboot. 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 your 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.
If you're using Time Machine to back up a portable Mac, some of the available space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of files you've recently deleted. 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.
To locate large files, you can use Spotlight. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your 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.
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 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.
Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click the line of text below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Launch the 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 (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 not to screw up. 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. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the files.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS 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 ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal. -
My startup disk is full, I need to clean it up, and I don't know how to even find it!
My startup disk is full, I need to clean it up, and I don't know how to even find it!
Don't mess with anything you don't recognize. The system is generally not the reason for lack of free space.
Best candidates are your files which are located in the folder with the little house for an icon in Finder. Of your own files the one most likely to take the largest amount disk space are music, movies, video and photos. Any of those can be deleted or move to external storage.
Allan -
its saying startup disk almost full. have no music or photos on computer. how do i clear it up and free up the HD
There are some items to the right of these reply boxes,
of them a few are likely to be of help to some extent...
Without knowing which OS X version, advice will be not specific
and to answer three different ways when one of them is correct
is a waste of time.
Is your OS X newer than Lion 10.7.5? IF so different rules apply
to finding out what is free space, where it is, & how to tell if it is.
For systems older than Lion (Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger, Panther)
the rules are a little different, since there would not be an Other item
on the hard disk drive which could contain items necessary to the OS
yet not detailed to the user.
And Lion 10.7 has a few hidden files that are hard to locate, and one
of them may have some bearing on the missing space of a HDD.
The items here, mostly for 10.7:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/24954432#24954432
start up disk full, other options:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11808734#11808734
There are Support articles, you could use Help viewer in the
system, on your computer, to look for results; or use google.
However, avoid the temptation to use a badware such as cleanmymac,
mackeeper, and others that are sources of known trouble to the Mac.
Good luck & happy computing! -
What can I do when my macbook air says startup disk is full
What can I do and where do I look to offload things when my macbook air says my startup disk is full?
ThanksEmpty 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.
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