My startup disk is full. I can't open anything to delete.
My startup disc is full and I can't open anything to do some deleting. Can anyone advise .
Thank you
Do you have an external drive? If you do not, strongly recommend you get one. The first step would be to make a back up of your internal hard drive. Of course that assumes you can format the external drive and use Time Machine on the computer in the state it is in now.
Once the back up is done you can try repairing the internal drive so you can start to purge unnecessary files off it.
Similar Messages
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Hi,A message on my computer keeps coming saying my startup disk is full.what can I do to solve this problem??
You need a minimum of 5GB free space, and typically you need about 15% free space.
Your Mac needs adequate hard drive space to operate normally. A low amount of RAM requires more drive space for Virtual Memory’s swap files. Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space are discussed in this link http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html
Look at these links.
Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use *WhatSize* described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html
Increase HD Free Space by using Monolingual @ http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/
How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Where Did My Disk Space Go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/770243/site_id/ 1
Cheers, Tom -
Startup Disk Almost Full, what can i do??
When I'm adding things to my iTunes, or even just start up my laptop, i keep getting a message that says my startup disk is almost full and i need to delete stuff off of it. Where is the startup disk that i can look at a list of files so i can delete them or is there something else i can do like buy an external hard drive? Or do i just need to update my macbook software?
It's almost certainly your stuff (music, video, etc) that's filling up the disk.
On a laptop, your startup disk is typically the only disk.
It's also the disk where your home directory and desktop are located.
Start by looking at your home directory, desktop, downloads and such; select the detailed view in Finder, and look for big files, or stuff you don't need any more.
Empty your trash, too.
Get yourself an external disk, connect it, and relocate some of your stuff there.
If you can delete enough stuff to load this, have a look at the [GrandPerspective|http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net> tool.
This forum is the Mac OS X Server forum, and you're almost certainly not running the Server version of the software here. Here are the client forums for the recent client versions: [Tiger client 10.4|http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=177],
[Leopard client 10.5|http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=235], and [Snow Leopard client 10.6|http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=263]. The Mac OS X client software is far more commonly used on a Mac laptop than is the Server software. -
My startup disk is full. Can I delete 16,255 Google RSS feeds in Mail screen?
I began to investigate all avenues to free up my startup disk space. This included deleting photos, movies, downloads, emptying trash, etc. I saved 15.87 GB out of the original 500 GB Mac hard drive. (By the way, everything was backed up to an external 1 TB hard drive). At best, deleting more photos may save me another 5 GB of HDD. Still a drop in the bucket. I then noticed that in my mail screen I have 16,255 Google RSS feeds. I only have 162 Apple Hot and the 16,255 Google RSS feeds. Can I delete the Google feeds and thereby free up disk space by doing that? I still want to use Google and not lose it permanently. Will it work?
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 had closed out of all of my programs but heard the internal fans running so I checked the activity monitor. It shows syslog d as the top process using the CPU right now. I have no idea what that means.
I read a thread about the startup disk being full and how you can free up memory. I have an airport extreme so TimeCapsule is backing up everything. I do have a bunch of pictures on iPhoto on the laptop; could move those to another location but I'm a little gunshy. I know they are on the TimeCapsule but I would like to save them to a second place before deleting from laptop just to be sure. I went through several things yesterday and emptied trash, etc. I wasn't able to locate the hidden files that the thread about the startup disk being full was referencing --- they were talking about large emails that were causing processes to happen taking up the CPU.... I wasn't able to find out if that was the case for me.
Also I'm going to look into getting another 2MB of memory and installing it on the Macbook, so I can upgrade to the latest OS. Anyone have an idea if that is worth the $$$ over buying a new laptop? Or anyone have ideas as to where to buy memory, etc.
Any ideas - help!Go step by step and test.
1. Start up in Safe Mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11212
2. Empty Trash.
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13806
3. Disk space / Time Machine ?/ Local Snapshots
Local backups
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4878
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.
This will take a while. Wait until it is finished.
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 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 -
I got a message saying that my startup disk is full and I need to delete files. I don't know where to fined the files I need to delete and don't understand how my disk can be full. Can someone help me with this?
To see how much disk space is available ...
Click your Apple menu top left in your screen. From the drop down menu click About This Mac > More Info > Storage
Make sure there's at least 15% free disk space.
Photos, video, documents, etc. all require disk space.
OSX Tips Where did my Disk Space go?
5 Quick Tips to Free Up Disk Space in Mac OS X
Freeing Up Hard Disk Space - Mac Guides
Never remove any Apple pre installed apps or system files. -
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) -
My startup disk is full and I can't get into my computer to delete files?
My startup disk is full and I can't get into my computer so I can delete some files???
.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
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I have been getting repeated messages "startup disk almost full". I am on a very new iMac running Lion with the most up to date OS. This is a 1 TB iMac. When I first got the message, I cleaned almost everything but the applications off the disk. I now have more than 900 GB of space but again I am getting the message. I found someone reporting the same problem and he said Apple Care reported a but in the mail system. He found a Fix but it is not working for me. (He clicked the option key and opened finder, then went to Library/mail/mailbox/recovered messages and deleted the recovered messages. But I do not have any folder called "recovered messages" so can't pursue that fix. Any ideas?
I'm don't know about the new systems, but I remember that I set the % full to warn me. Your % might be set to 20% or something rather than 10% which is a preferable safety margin for many uses. I solved this start up disk problem by installing a 2 Tb internal drive and keeping my data files on external, raided, drives. A real show-stopper is when your 45 Tb external drive warns you that you're too close to OUT for comfort. And, Yes, I do keep it trash free.
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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 startup disk is full?!?! This has been happening for a while and I have dumped 4500 jepegs from iPhoto onto an external drive to try and free up space. I am still recieving the "Startup disk full" message. What more can I do?!?!
Did you empty the Trash?
What size hard drive & how much free space. You should always have a minimum of 10-15% or more free space?
Cheers, Tom -
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. -
What can i do when my startup disk is full?
what can i do when my startup disk is full?
what can i do when my startup disk is full?
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