My start up disc is full and my MAC isnt running properly

My Mac Book Pro was bought in 2010, It has loads of pictures, vidoes etc. Now it is saying my "start up disc is full" I have no idea what to do next!
I have tried burning videos to take them off the computer but they never come out with sound. I have tried to delete unnecessary items but want to keep music etc on the computer. Any ideas how to fix this, get the computer running properly and BURN DVDs with sound!
Signed,
Super Frusterated!

One way or another you need to get stuff off the hard drive, be it trash what you don't need or archive what you want to save somewhere or get an external hard rive and store stuff there. Then worry about how to burn videos with sound.

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My Spotlight is not working. I get the message that my start up disc is full and to start deleting files. What kind of files?

I am getting a pop up message that my start up disc is full and my spotlight is not working. The message tells me that I need to delete files. My question is what files do I need to delete? And why is my Spotlight not working?

You may find this link of interest and value...
http://macmost.com/what-to-do-when-your-hard-drive-is-full.html

Ikeep getting a message that my start up disc is full and i don't know how to free up space.. also when i o to download some files i am told there is no space left to download i bought this macbook pro used an receiver no discs.. what can i do?? t

ikeep getting a message that my start up disc is full and i don't know how to free up space.. also when i o to download some files i am told there is no space left to download i bought this macbook pro used an receiver no discs.. what can i do??

You need to purchase an external drive and start moving some files to it or you can try trashing some files that you no longer need.
Download OmniDiskSweeper and see where your larger files are... you can move them to an external drive or trash them: it's up to you.
I would also begin, since it's obviously don't have backups, a backup scheme or two. See Most commonly used backup methods.
Good luck,
Clinton

I keep getting a "start up disc is full" message on my iMac (running leopard)- its a new mac so can't be full?

I keep getting a "start up disc is full" message on my iMac (OSX 10.7.3 running leopard). It can't be full the mac is only a few months old - please help - I am not a computer whizz so treat me gently!!

Do you have any external hard drives attached that your system might be booting from? Did you create multiple partitions on your hard drive, one of which may be full? These are a couple of possibilities, and there may be others.
I suggest powering on your system then immediately hold down the option key. Your system should display the system picker screen showing all bootable volumes. Do you see just one boot volume show up?
I also suggest launching the Activity Monitor application that can be found in the Applications/Utilities folder. Click on the 'Disk Usage' option to see how much drive space is available as shown below. You may also want to use the Disk Utility application to verify the hard drive and file permissions. Both of these are options available within the application.

My start up disk is full and my mac wont start

Hi My start up disk is full and my computer wont start how do I get the system to reboot again?

Ensure that the external is correctly formatted
Drag and dropped the files
Test to be sure that the moved files work
Once the moved files work delete the originals
Allan

Start-up disc is full and mac book pro won't boot

I got the your startup disc is full pop-up a few hours ago, but didn't do anything about it. I powered down my machine, but now when I try to power it on again, it won't boot, I simply get the spinning gear and apple logo. I opened disc utility and performed a disc check and it said the disc was ok, however there is only 700 kb of free space. I want to free up some space to allow the computer to boot, but don't know how. Is there a way to do this? I don't have another mac available to me, not sure how to fix this issue.

You're Welcome. Glad you got it sorted and Thanks for posting back.
All Kudos goes to the Author of the User Tip by ds store

When I turn on MacBook Pro it telling me that my start up disk is full and I need to delete files. How do I get to start up disc?

When I search a file called start up disc, nothing shows up. How do I delete files so when my computer starts up, I no longer get a message stating that my start up disc is full and that I need to delete some files?

There is a boot drive inside the computer and it's storage space is filled up.
You need to create a external storage drive and transfer some of your files off the internal boot drive.
TimeMachine doesn't work for this as it's just a rotating backup image of what's on your boot drive, it's not a storage drive for more space and to save things permanently.
So what you need to do is get three external drives from the office or computer store.
I suggest 3-4 separate drives at 1TB each (or more capacity if you really got a lot of stuff), USB 2 is currently fine, the newer USB 3's are more expensive but your Mac doesn't have USB 3 ports, so get the less expensive USB 2 drives and save some money. If you can get Firewire 800/USB combination drives, those would be a better choice as Firewire 800 is the fastest for most Mac's. Only the very new ones have Thunderbolt and the new drives for that are rare and expensive.
Make sure they are self powered drives with their own power supply, not port powered as those are a bit flaky as Apple can just determine the device is drawing too much current from the computer and turn it off.
Note: sometimes if your computer is so full, you might actually have to delete some files in order to be able to get it to function transferring files, so pick ones that you can get new copies again, like free iTunes podcasts or movies for instance.
TimeMachine Drive
The first drive you connect to the Mac is going to pop up a window to ask if you want to make this a "TimeMachine Drive" go ahead and allow it to do that, it's backing up everything on your internal boot drive, it's going to take a long time.
Once it's finished, disconnect this TimeMachine drive and label it as a "TimeMachine Drive"
Extra space /Storage drives
The second drive you connect is going to be your "extra storage drive" basically to free up space off the internal boot drive by transferring files to it.
Formatting:
You first need to format this drive, you use Disk Utility in the Applications> Utilities folder.
On the left will be the 'name of the drive' + "media" click that and then click the Partition tab
Now click 1 Partition, Option: GUID, format OS X Extended (Journaled), give it a name like "StorageOne" and click Apply.
Now click the Erase Tab and Security Option> Zero All Data and click Erase (use the same name) this will take a long time, like 2 hours per 1TB. It's going to check the drive for any errors and make sure it's working.
Note: If the drive fails to format, then perform the Zero All Data first, then visit the Partition tab.
Once the second drive is finished, then do the third drive in the same manner, this time naming it "StorageTwo"
Transferring Data off to the Extra Storage drive
Connect only StorageOne drive and visit your User/Movies folder, it's likely the biggest culprit of oversized files. Create a new folder on the StorageOne drive called "ExtraMovies" and transfer the contents of User/Movies to the "ExtraMovies" folder via drag and drop methods.
Confirm the files were transferred and then delete those movies by dragging them to your Trash can and selecting "Empty Trash" from the Finder menu (if you select Secure Empty Trash on large files it takes a really long time to finish as it's scrubbing the drive, likely unnecessary except for sensitive files)
If you have a large amount of User/Files elsewhere, you will have to search yourself and repeat the same steps to free up room on your internal boot drive.
Once you have made some free space, download this free program to help you visualize where all your space is being taken up.
http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/#download
Once you have completed moving files to the StorageOne drive, connect StorageTwo and copy the contents of StorageOne folders to StorageTwo drive. Both drives have to be connected of course.
Rule of thumb
Maintain TWO separate hardware copies of your User data at ALL TIMES
Because you need more room, thus the storage drives are for extra space. The TimeMachine drive is a backup of your internal boot drive and the second storage drive is a backup copy of the first storage drive. So that way your sticking with the rule of thumb, get it?
Don't connect TimeMachine while your transferring files, or formatting drives, you don't want it to "kick in" while your doing all this heavy work or transferring a large amount of files, I think it does so every hour, which you are going to taking quite some time to do all this work.
Once your all done making room and copying files to the Storage drives, disconnect them and label them and date them.
Reconnect TimeMachine drive
Then connect the TimeMachine drive and it will make a NEW backup of your now newer configuration on your boot drive and keep it updated every time you connect it.
Again, TimeMachine is NOT a storage drive for permanent keeping of data, it deletes old stuff as time progresses. So even though you can "go back in time" and recover a file you transferred then deleted off the your internal boot drive, it won't keep everything forever like a storage drive can.
Consider Cloning your boot drive.
TimeMachine drives can only restore, they are not bootable like a clone is, so a TimeMachine drive isn't a heck of a lot of help if your hard drive fails to boot the computer, so a "hold the option key bootable clone" made with third party software is a very useful as you get to use the computer just like it was before and can get online, grab files off the internal drive and so forth. Even erase and reverse cloning!
The trick with a clone is you make one and keep it disconnected, updating it from time to time. If a software update or install hoses your machine, you can option boot off the clone, grab the latest copy of your files and reverse clone the clone with the updated files back onto your OS X partition, reboot the computer and it's like nothing happened.
It's a advanced technique, you will have to learn a lot more perhaps before attempting it, but it's a lifesaver.
Cloning requires another separate external hard drive and free cloning software.
You can read more about it all here. Take your time, you have a lot to absorb.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201

I've lost a book I was writing, using pages. my mac air could not autosave it because my start up disc was full. the computer froze, i turned it off, then back on, and it was working fine but the file was gone.

ow do I recover a Pages file lost because Mac Air start up disc was full and couldn't autosave?

Unless you've done anything to change it, Google keeps every email that ever passes through their server in your All Mail folder/mailbox/label. Even if you delete stuff, they hold onto it, there. You have to go out of your way to actually delete anything permanently.

My start up disk is full and I get a blank screen when I turn on how can i fix this

my start up disc is full and when i switch on my computer the screen is blank. how can i get the dock up again

I have the same problem. Anyone help you?

My mac is locked up, start up disc is full!!!!

I can turn on my mac book pro but it will only go to a blue screen and give me a dumb message stating that my start up disc is full and I need to delet some files. But it wont let me go any further than that so I cant delet anything. This is really ******* me off!!! Does any one know what to do that wont cost me sending off this darn thing to some lab?
-Stupid nam

Well, it depends how you backed up - if you just copied files over, then no, you can't use it to boot from. If you want to have a bootable clone copy, you have to use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create the clone. If you used Time Machine, you could restore from it but must be running Lion (10.7) I believe in order to boot from it. However, I don't use Time Machine, so I may be wrong there.
If you have your Snow Leopard install disk, you should be able to boot from it (insert disk and then hold down C key while restarting or Option key while booting up. If you use Option, press it until you get a screen showing you the available disks to boot from - choose your install disk). Once booted, you should have access to your internal hard drive. You can try to attach an external and move things over or, if you already have things backed up, just delete some files. Empty trash in between so it doesn't get too full. Keep doing that until you have at least 10 - 15 GB empty on your hard drive.

Am getting message from MacPro that my start up disc is full - but I can't find it and can't figure out what to do to help situation. I've been making a number of imovies, which generates junk files. help?

I am getting message from MacPro that my start up disc is full - but I can't find this "start up disc" and can't figure out what to do to help situation. I've been making a number of imovies, which generates junk files and material that I should toss in the trash, but it is not clear to me what items I can toss and which items I can't toss. Can you help? Using the imovie "help" support the system showed me under the menu item "go" where the "start up disc" should be - but that wasn't actually available on my menu! Thanks for your help!

Disk Utility
Get Info on the icon on Desktop
Try to move this to the MacBook Pro forum
Your boot drive should be 30% free to really perform properly. 10% minimum
Backup, clone, use TimeMachine, use another drive for your projects and movies, replace and upgrade the internal drive even.

I'm being told my start up disc is full on my 2010 macbook. Memory is 2GB 1067 MHz; and Finder tells me I have 1.05 GB still available. Do I need a bigger hard drive?

I'm getting error message that my start up disc is full on my 2010 macbook. Started with 2GB 1067 MHz; and, according to Finder, still have 1.05 GB available. Any idea what's up? I had MacKeeper dump all junk files. Do I need a new hard drive?

First of all I would suggest you get rid of MacKeeper, which is well known in the Mac community to be useless or in some cases to be as bad as malware. Read this user tip by Klaus1.
The startup disk (your hard drive) is not the same as the system memory (the 2GB of RAM you describe.) You may very well need a larger hard drive, but the first thing I would try would be looking through your downloads folder for old installer disk images, deleting any that you do not need any more (usually all of them) and emptying your trash. Many users put files in their trash and forget to empty it.
If that doesn't gain you sufficient space, you may want to replace your hard drive with a larger model. You don't mention what size drive you have, but it is possible to do it yourself. See page 37 of this user manual.
Another option would be to put files that are taking up a large amount of space (often iTunes and iPhoto Libraries fall into this category) on an external hard drive. This works best if you do not need portability.
Best of luck.

Help! My mac turns grey and i cannot sign in. It said "your start up disc is full".

My child incidently put her itumes to my macbook air. It seems it the macbook is very full. When we turn it on, it stated " your start up disc is full". We cannot delete files / programs to make more spaces because i cannot even sign in. The monitor turns grey and freeze after I click "sign in". Help me, please.... Thank you very much for your kind attention and help.

Step 1
The first step in dealing with a startup failure is to secure the data. If you want to preserve the contents of the startup drive, and you don't already have at least one current backup, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data that has changed since the last backup, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to start. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
a. Start up from the Recovery partition, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) When the OS X Utilities screen appears, launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
b. If Step 1a fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
c. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
d. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.
Step 2
You might be able to start up in safe mode even though you can't start up normally. Otherwise, start up from an external drive, or else use the technique in Step 1b, 1c, or 1d to mount the internal drive and delete some files. 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.

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:
☞ 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.
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.

Following a message saying that my Startup disc was full and advising me to delete some files, I deleted my trash but then apps started to fail. When I tried to log on again, all I got was a blank screen and a cursor. I am a Mac Book Pro virgin, help

Following a message saying that my Startup disc was full and advising me to delete some files, I deleted my trash but then apps started to fail. When I tried to log on again, all I got was a blank screen and a cursor, so I am unable to delete any more files. I am a Mac Book Pro virgin, help

How much free space do you actually have? Go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac... More Info... and click on the Storage tab. You should see something like this...
This will show you how much free space you have and what's taking up all the space on your hard drive. You may need to backup and trash some seldom used files, applications, etc. You have to drag them into the Trash and empty the trash to regain the space. A general rule of thumb is that you should have about 15% of your hard drive storage free.
Good luck,
Clinton

My start up disc is full and my MAC isnt running properly

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