Imac startup disc is full and it won't boot up.  what can I do?

My imac's startup disc is full and it won't boot up...thanks to my daughter uploading a million pictures.  What do I do to fix this?  We do have an external harddrive as well, but things haven't been moved over in a while.

You'll need to have access to another Mac.  Connected the two with a Firewire cable and boot your iMac into Target Disk Mode,  Transferring files between two computers using FireWire.  Now you'll have access to your iMac's boot drive where you can download the necessary files to an external HD that is formatted OS X Extended (journaled) and then delete from the boot drive to give you a minimum of 10-15 GB of free space.
One can move both your iPhoto and iTunes libraries to the EHD to free up space on the boot drive and run the libraries from there.  However, it must be formatted as I described above.

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  • What do I need to do when I receive the message ". . . your startup disc is full, you need to make some room by deleting some files"

    I hope I'm in the right place since I was sort of redirected here Recently I have been receiving the message that my startup disc is full and that I need to make room by deleting files.  At first I received the message when I left my computer unattended with my virtual machine on, using VMWare Fusion to run Windows.  Recently though, I got the message when I left my computer unattended for about 6 hours without the virtual machine running.  As an aside, I get extremely nervous when anything freezes VMWare because it is usually a nightmare to get back into Windows if I can at all without calling Tech Support. This new message however, appeared without the virtual machine active, so I was relieved that VMWare most likely was not the cause.  After reading a number of Tech Support articles and Community discussion questions and answers, I started wondering if iTunes or the SMC firmware or a combination thereof may be causing the problems.  Mind you I know nothing about the SMC stuff because as I said, I am really new to Mac and know very little about computer code or processors or any of that stuff.  But I do know that iTunes has recently been giving me some trouble, such as opening on start up and I can't figure out why and messing around with my iTunes libraries.  I also read about the SMC firmware and the computer's sleep cycle so that sort of made sense.  But I seriously need advice from someone a lot smarter than me.  So, before you ask, both iTunes and my SMC firmware are up to date. I'm running a mid-2007 iMac Intel Core 2 Duo Processor with 2.4 GHz of speed.
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    Any help would be appreciated.  Please forgive any inaccurate terms or mis-statements of terminology as I do not really know what I'm talking about as far as the pieces and parts of the operating system; I'm just trying my best to describe what I see.
    One more piece of advice that I would appreciate would be recommendations about a good file cleaner, for duplicates, messy file structure, space utilization software; it also needs to be idiot proof software.  I have a trial version of Appdelete that I never really used and I have the purchased version of Tune Up My Mac that I haven't spent much time with because I'm afraid I'll delete something I shouldn't
    Thank you for your help
    Memalyn

    Hi Memalyn
    Essentially, the bare issue is that you have a 500GB hard drive with only 10GB free. That is not sufficient to run the system properly. The two options you have are to move/remove files to another location, or to install a larger hard drive (eg 2TB). Drive space has nothing to do with SMC firmware, and usually large media files are to blame.
    My first recommendation is this: download and run the free OmniDiskSweeper. This will identify the exact size of all your folders - you can drill down into the subfolders and figure out where your largest culprits are. For example, you might find that your Pictures folder contains both an iPhoto Library and copies that you've brought in from a camera but are outside the iPhoto Library structure. Or perhaps you have a lot of purchased video content in iTunes.
    If you find files that you KNOW you do not need, you can delete them. Don't delete them just because you have a backup, since if the backup fails, you will lose all your copies.
    Don't worry about "cleaners" for now - they don't save much space and can actually cause problems. Deal with the large file situation first and see how you get on.
    Let us know what you find out, and if you manage to get your space back.
    Matt

  • HT4623 My IPad won't update.  Been trying for 2 days.  A msg says am error occurred.  I delete some things I don't use and still won't update.  What is wrong

    Mmy Idad says an error occurred and it won't update.  What can I do to fix this?

    Try update using iTune (computer)
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  • My start up disc is full i have a macbook air, i back everuthing up with time capsule and  have movies all my music libraries and photos onto that too so as i have free space, but my max still says my startup disc is full with "other"

    my start up disc is full i have a macbook air, i back everuthing up with time capsule and  have movies all my music libraries and photos onto that too so as i have free space, but my max still says my startup disc is full with "other"

    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 as described here. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
    You can also use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can 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.
    Proceed further only if the problem hasn't been solved.
    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.
    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:
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    ☞ 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.
    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 you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

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