Mac mini startup disk full?

I keep getting an error that says that my startup disk is full and it pauses open browsers and programs. What is this?

Means you have no free space left on your hard drive. You can check this by selecting the disk's Desktop icon, then Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the top you will see information on the disk drive's capacity, space used, and space available.
When you get such an alert either you need to erase some of your files to free up space or replace the drive with a larger one.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your drive.

Similar Messages

  • Mac Mini: Error-Disk Full-UNABLE TO BOOT-WHITE SCREEN at STARTUP

    Please Help!
    Last night a message popped up saying "STARTUP DISK FULL/almost full...Delete files to make disk space available"
    Immediately after that message the system froze and I waited for a hour to see if it would unfreeze by itself
    It didn't so I then pressed and held the power button until the system shut down
    Now when I power up my mac mini, all I see is a white screen
    Please advise...any and all help would be very much appreciated

    Which model Mac mini is it? If it is quite an old one it might not in pre-boot stage know how to drive a brand new style keyboard. You can double check the keyboard itself is ok by plugging it in to your MacBook when it is already booted.
    You could also test the DVD in your MacBook.
    If you have not used the DVD drive in the Mac mini for a while it might have got dirty. Eject the disc if you can and carefully blow in to the disc opening to try and clear any dust.
    Normally, methods of ejecting the disk would be -
    Holding down the mouse button while you start the computer
    Pressing the eject key on the keyboard
    and various other methods that need the computer to be already up and running
    Any Apple stores in your area?
    It could possibly be still trying to boot from the hard disk - if your not able to get the keyboard recognised then obviously your not yet able to get it to accept a command to boot from a different drive. If your Mac mini is an older model and hence not in pre-boot mode able to recognise the new keyboard, do you have any friends with an old plastic Mac keyboard?
    An older keyboard would be one that looks like this http://www.user-agent.org/stuff/images/mac_keyboard_02.jpg
    You probably have a new one that looks like http://media.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/products/10514/07kb_top.jpg
    If you feel up to it, an option would be to take the Mac mini apart and remove the hard disk, then if you have the bits, put it in an external case and you can then connect it to the MacBook as an external drive. I have all those bits available to me but many ordinary users don't.

  • Mac Mini Startup Disk

    Hi,
    I have just got a Mac Mini, Dual Core and am trying to startup from a firewire HDD just as I seem able to do on my Powerbook G4 1.5 GHz and Powermac G4 533 MHz. I have OS 10.4.8 installed on the Firewire HDD yet when I select 'Startup Disk' from System Preferences I do not see the OS on the firewire dirve as an option. Any help/suggestions would be very gratefully received. Thanks very much.
    Mac Mini 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

    Hello! Your issue probably is related to the version of OSX you're trying to boot from. If the external is the exact same OS that's on the Mini it will work but if the OS is one for the PB or the G4 it's not likely to work. Take the Mini disk and do a new install on an external drive and you should have no problems or if you like you can "clone" the Mini drive to the external and it will work also. Tom

  • My mac book startup disk is full and when I start it, it give me a blank blue screen. I have tried the shift and I started in safe mode, and it gave me the stars screen. How can I delete files to fix the problem

    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 problem

    1. 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

  • Startup disk full error - boots normally but won't start finder

    I'm having a problem in which my iMac when it boots gives me an error that the startup disk is full, but other than that it can boot normally and allow me to log in, but after that the startup stalls. I never get past the default "outer space" desktop image and finder never starts, so there's no icons, no dock, and nothing on the menu bar. What's weird is that Safari and Mail start and I can see them because I believe I have them starting automatically at boot. Safari works (I'm using it now to enter this discussion). Mail on the other hand starts but is hung checking for the servers for incoming mail.
    I've tried to boot in safe mode (holding down Shift key at startup), but it doesn't work.
    I've tried to boot in single user mode (holding down cmd-S at startup), but it doesn't work either.
    I've tried to boot from Snow Leopard installation media (holding down C at startup), but it doesn't work as well.
    Each time I try one of these alternate boot methods, it just takes me to the normal login screen with the startup disk full message. I click OK, login, and get stuck.
    I'm just trying to get the finder started so that I can delete some files, but I just can't get that far. It's strange that the browser works perfectly and internet connection is fine, but nothing else works.
    Thoughts? Thanks. - Mike

    Hi Lina, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
    Safe Mode might allow you to boot and free up some space.
    If you have access to another Mac and a FireWire cable, another option would be to use FireWire Target Disk Mode to transfer data to the other Mac and delete it on your MBA.
    If either way works, you want to open up somewhere around 15% free space. Once you do that, run Repair Disk: Boot from install disc (insert disc>restart>immediately hold down c key and keep holding it until you see “Preparing Installation”)>at first screen select the language and click Continue> click on the Utilities Menu in the menu bar>open Disk Utility>select your HD in the panel on the left side>click Repair Disk at bottom of main window. Run this at least twice, and keep running it until it says “appears ok” twice in a row. If that doesn’t happen, you may need a stronger utility such as DiskWarrior or if the directory is damaged beyond repair, you may need to reinstall the OS, or you may have a damaged HD (repair utilities can only repair the directory structure, not the HD itself).
    Ultimately, though, it sounds like you need a larger HD . . . .

  • Startup Disk Full Error - Please help

    Dear ALL,
    I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message.
    I have no clue as to how to correctly fix this issue. I looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available, which I would have thought would have been ample space. I have started to remove unwanted files and backup to CD large image files. So this should free up some more space. The question is will this be enough to get rid of this issue and is it associated with the amount of HD space on my drive? or would I need to run some script etc? or download/buy some other product to fix this?
    Your help is greatly appreciated.
    Max

    OK I tried Macaroni...and when I tried to work with a TIFF file I get the same Startup Disk is FULL message. The I get an adobe message saying Scratch Disk is FULL.
    Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

  • What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error?

    What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error?  I can't update software or use my MacAir at all.

    Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
    iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
    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 free 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 anywhere in the 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
    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.

  • Adobe Photoshop Scratch Disk Full/Startup Disk Full error - PLEASE HELP

    Dear ALL,
    I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message. Never happended before.
    Since my initial post I downloaded Macaroni (utility) and have run the daily/weekly/monthly backups, checked the /private/var/vm and /private/var/log and /Volumes. Nothing unusual there...
    When I started getting this error I had 32GB left on a looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available on a 152GB drive. Now after deleting I have 76GB capacity left.
    But when I tried to open a Photoshop PSD or TIFF file and do a crop I still get tge Startup Disk is Full error followed by the Adobe Photoshop error Scratch Disk is Full.
    I am thinking of running the Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and doing a Verify Disk and Verify Disk Permissions followed by Repair Disk Permissions. I will be logged into the machine whilst doing this. Is there any danger in this as I have read elsewhere that I need to do this from a bootable volume. If that is the case how do I create a bootable disk/cd? If not then what is the cure to my Disk Full as surely there is now nearly 50% FREE!!!!!
    Please help.
    Max

    PS will always use the boot disk for scratch to some extent even with an alternate primary scratch disk.
    Be sure to turn off Spotlight as it causes problems.
    4GB of RAM would be nice, I understand small files don't work well if there is more than 4GB RAM but large files will. OS X uses free RAM as cache and RAM disk before using disk drives.
    How much RAM is allocated to PS? More RAM would help.
    A dedicated lean boot drive helps. Install just what is needed for your work, use a separate drive for data, and yet another RAID volume for scratch.
    When in doubt, backup with SuperDuper, and do an erase and then restore. Always backup before repairing; and never, ever, use an old version of Tiger CD/DVD - like 10.4.2 on 10.4.7/.8. Use "fsck" instead, or your emergency boot drive.
    Also, give Applejack a shot and delete the cache folders and swap files from time to time to keep a system humming. CS/CS2 and Tiger benefit nicely from more RAM.

  • Startup Disk Full shows up

    Dear Sir,
    Please help me to solve this problem,
    My Macbook Pro shows some errors 'Startup Disk Full',
    and the bad thing is,it shows after i on my Macbook and the popup comes up before i can entering the menu,
    So what should i do now?

    It's after 2am her in the US.
    Can you start up in safe mode?  If so, empty your trash if there is anything in there.  Also, start deleting some files or transfer them to an external disk.
    Mac OS X 10.6: Starting up in safe mode
    Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
    Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
    Going to bed now.  The night owls will need to take over from here if you need further help.

  • "Your Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory" - uploading files problem

    Hi everyone,
    I'm running a late-2012 27 inch iMac - 3.4GHz Intel Core i7, 32GB 1600 MHz DDR3 with the 3TB fusion drive, OS 10.8.4. At present there is 1.92TB of available storage.
    I have received this message "Your Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory" just before a full on crash multiple times in the past couple of days whilst using WeTransfer to send over some large files (500MB+). The applications I have had open at the time have been: Activity Monitor, App Store, Firefox, and Finder. Over the course of uploading the files, the active system memory has gone from 1.04GB and steadily increased until it more or less maxes out around 29GB, at which point the Page Outs rocket up to around 40GB/s and the swap memory fills up pretty quickly until the computer basically can't take any more and blacks out.
    This is a pretty new thing, haven't really had an issues before. My main software used: Sibelius 7 & Logic Pro X. I've also recently started working with Final Cut Pro X, which seems to have been struggling at points. I've tried closing everything, restarting the computer and not opening anything (specifically NOT FCPX) before attempting an upload. I've even gone so far as to remove FCPX from my system, and yet the problem is still recurring. Both "kernal_task" and "WindowServer" have been running high on CPU when these problems have occurred.
    Does anyone know what might be the issue and how it could possibly be resolved?
    Really appreciate any help, I'm in the middle of a fairly sizeable project and the deadlines are just around the corner.
    Thanks,
    Tom

    There is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory. That can happen for two reasons:
    You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or
    You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.
    Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination.
    When you notice the swap activity, open the Activity Monitor application and select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If you don't see that column, select
    View ▹ Columns ▹ Real Memory
    from the menu bar.
    If one process (excluding "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more real memory over time without ever releasing it. Here is an example of how it's done.
    The process named "Safari Web Content" renders web pages for Safari and other applications. It uses a lot of memory and may leak if certain Safari extensions or third-party web plugins are installed. Consider it a prime suspect.
    If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.
    The next suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command: 
    sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total
    where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details.

  • I keep getting "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files/documents to an external hard disk

    Dear all,
    What should I do? I keep getting the "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files and documents to an external hard disk.
    Thanks a heap.

    For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article.
    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 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 free 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.
    See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
    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.
    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 ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
    Triple-click anywhere in the 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
    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 (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 with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning your 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.

  • Startup disk full on new Macbook Pro

    I bought a Late 2013 13 inch 8 gb Macbook Pro to replace a mid 2010 that had hung up during an update and seized up. I migrated a backup of the 2010 to the 2013 and immediately began getting "startup disk full" notices.  I mainly use it for pictures and music and very little document type stuff.  I have emptied the trash and repaired permissions and emptied email and downloads etc. I can't figure out what is taking up my space.  Storage looks like this, 16.94 free of 250.14. Other storage 166 gb, Apps 37 gb, Photos 14 gb, Movies 5 gb, Audio 10 gb.  Any suggestions?

    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.

  • Startup Disk Full -- Weird

    I'm on my Mac Pro as seen below. My main disk has boot camp partition.
    Macintosh HD:
    U: 73gb
    F: 102gb
    Windows:
    U: 12gb
    F: 3gb
    In Photoshop CS3, when doing some light photoshop work, I OSX throws up "Startup disk full" and then CS3 throws "Scratch Disk full." Very strange as you can see my main disk has 102gb of free space. I checked the scratch disk settings in CS3 and confirmed that they are on the right drive.
    Any thoughts?

    I was having the same issue yesterday, I have since reset Safari (of all things?) and haven't had the issue since. Must be an issue with 10.5.2, it never happened before.

  • Help: Premiere is making my startup disk full, but I set everything to go on an external hard drive.

    The iMac I am using is for the sole purpose of editing and nothing else. I have no idea what is making my startup disk full, and I can not locate the files that are filling the startup disk except the fact that it is telling me I am running out of space. The startup disk is a 250GB SSD, the second internal drive is 1 TB HDD. All of my premiere and video files are loaded ton a 4TB G-RAID.

    Do you have your projects set to use a drive other than startup?
    My 3 hard drives to edit AVCHD are configured as...
    1 - 320Gig Boot for Win7 64bit Pro and ALL program installs
    2 - 320Gig data for Win7 paging swap file and video project files
    When I create a project on #2 drive, the various work files follow,
    so my boot drive is not used for the media cache folders and files
    3 - 1Terabyte data for all video files... input & output files

  • New MacAir error states "your Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory"  All I have added is MS Office

    My new Mac Air states that my " Mac OSX startup disk has no more space available for application memory" and wants to force quit Safari.  I have only added MS Office to the computer and Carbonite.  Any suggestions?

    Select the icon of your startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you renamed it) in the Finder and open the Info window. What value is shown for Available (space)?

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