Need Help cleaning Hard Drive - What can I delete?

I am attempting to clean my hard drive and find space! I downloaded OmniDiskSweeper and see some large files I am wondering if I can delete. Can I delete without consequence the following:
Under Library - Cookies, Cache, Thunderbird
Under Desktop Items - previous local idisk with a .sparsebundles extension
I would appreciate any advice in this regard.

You need to free up lots of hard drive space.
At a minimum, at least, 15 to 20 GBs of space.
Perhaps even more.
Hard drive full or near full:
You are going to have to delete, move or archive your data to regain hard drive space.
Have you emptied your iMac's Trash icon in the Dock?
If you use iPhoto, iPhoto has its own trash that needs to be emptied, also.
If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!
Other things you can do to gain space.
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive older emails you want to save.
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Uninstall apps that you no longer use. If the app has a dedicated uninstaller, use it to completely uninstall the app. If the app has no uninstaller, then just drag it to the OS X Trash icon and empty the Trash.
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
When you install and launch it, let it do its thing initially, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run all of the processes in the tabs. 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.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be thinned out, moved, also, to the external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
You may have to Purchase an external FireWire or Thunderbolt hard drive to move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.
Good Luck!

Similar Messages

I need some help to create more space on my hard drive-what can I delete? I have my external G-DRIVE connected as a back up, so i think I'm duplicating a lot of back up files, mostly photos through Lightroom on my Mac HD. Only 9GB left out of 297GB...

Have never had to retrieve backed up files so I think I'm just chicken to delete files on my Mac. Is everything on my back up if I need it? Even photos that have been processed in Lightroom? Could I delete all older photo folders from my Mac and still get them from external drive if I needed them down the road? I have run a GrandPerspective scan and it appears most of my disk space is used for photo files and back-ups...probably have 30,000-40,000 photos. Thanks!

Look at getting Onyx, as you have alot of photo's, and so do I. Onyx will help clear somethings from you Mac, all you have to do is run Automation, and or Cleaning. Is that 30,000-40,000 Photo's Duplicates? if so, you might want to delete as many as the those duplicates as possible. i see you use Lightroom, are you useing that to import your images or are you useing something else like Iphoto, or just importing them to your mac. if you are using something else to import your photo's and then reimporting them, this might create duplicates of images. also sometimes when you delete images you dont want, they might not be acctually deleted. so clear you Trash, and run onyx to help clear these things up.
I know there are a few different programs out there that will help clrear out duplicates of items, and help you reduce space.
Duplicate-Annihilator Looks for images in Iphoto that are the same, and allows you to change them or delete them.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/18748/duplicate-annihilator
TidyUp ($$) Will look for Music, Pictures Documents, or any duplicates.
http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/TidyUp.html
Hope This Helps you.

Final cut is not reading events or projects from my external hard drive, what can I do?

Final Cut X is not reading events of projects from my external hard drive, what can i do?

Like this
Cmd-Shift-4. Drag a box around the area to capture. Screen shot appears on the desktop. Click the camera button in the message reply window.

I've ordered a new mac book pro 15" and i need to clean hard drive off my old PC...not really to move them to the mac, but just to save in case needed; mostly pics and office docs....any suggestions?

I've ordered a new mac book pro 15" and i need to clean hard drive off my old PC...not really to move them to the mac, but just to save in case needed; mostly pics and office docs....any suggestions?

Buy an external USB hard drive and copy your data to it. Either that or burn them all to single or double layer DVDs (depending on amount of data you have). Or if it's really a small amount, consider putting it all on a USB memory stick.

HT1338 my mac pro doesn't see my usb external hard drive what can i do?

I'm having a problem with my mac pro not see my usb external hard drive. Can someone tell me something I can do to get the mac tosee the external drive?
Thank you in advance.
George

Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) and check the sidebar. If it's in it, select it and format it unless you have files

My Imac needs a new hard drive. Can anyone help ensure I get the right one?

I have an Imac from around 2008-09. IMac8,1
It's running Mac Os X ver. 10.5.8 and has the stock hard drive in it.
2gb ram
Running a 2.8ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and I think has like 250 gb
I'd like to get something bigger and also upgrade the operating system. Don't need multiple TB's nor can I afford it but want to ensure i get the right thing for my needs.
It won't install adobe photoshop 6 because operating system is too old but don't want to spend money on new operating system with hard drive that keeps failing.
Error code: 4hdd/11/40000000 SATA (0,0) !
Got this error code about a year ago. downloaded a manual fan program that has helped but every third day or so it crashes and when i try reboot i get the dreaded question mark. usually if i let it rest for an hour or two it fires up but i don't want to risk anymore.
any help greatly appreciated.
cheers

I suspect a failed HD, in that case I'd recommend Apple Hardware Test in Extended Mode at least 3x. You will need the original install discs that shipped with the computer, if you do not have them any longer you will need to order a replacement set from Apple by calling AppleCare. You will need a credit card and the serial number of the machine. The cost should be nominal.

Need Help Recovering Hard Drive Space on Disk Utility

I recently wanted to resize my Boot Camp hard drive partition as I did not need it to be 194 gb. In the process I screwed something up and now that space that was once my Boot Camp Partition is now "free space." My Mac Partition still says that I have 305 gb left and I am unsure how to expand this partition to get back that "grey" space. I've tried using Boot Camp Assistant, starting with Command+R after the "chime," and restoring my OSX (not completely however).
I need help in getting back this missing space. It seems that I have looked everywhere and although people seem to have a similar issue I can't figure it out.
Would restoring Mountain Lion completely by using a USB jump drive solve this problem? I have an external hard drive that uses Time Machine to back up my MacBook so a complete restore shouldn't be an issue.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!
P.S. This is what my disk utility currently looks like...

You can try to use Boot Camp Assistant to completely remove the Windows partition but it might not work.
Simple fact is once you setup a Windows partition you can't fool with it at all, that is unless you use some add on program specifically designed to do that on a Mac computer. If you need to resize the Windows partition you first need to use BCA and remove the partition completely and then recreate it at the new size you want and reinstall Windows.
You might have to use Time Machine and backup your Mac partition then repartition the complete drive and then restore from that Time Machine backup. Then setup the Windows partition and reinstall Windows.

NEED HELP ..HARD DRIVE PROBLEMS

My safari window doesnt pop up and ive been told it had to get my hard drive cleaned ..soo can yu instruct me in how to clean my hard drive so my safari & etc. would work the way there suppose too! plz & thnk yu!

Miki:
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
ive been told it had to get my hard drive cleaned
What?
Try starting up in Safe Mode.
Then Repair Disk
Insert Installer disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
Go to Installer menu (Panther and earlier) or Utilities menu (Tiger) and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
Select First Aid in the Main panel.
(Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel, and report if it says anything but Verified)
Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.
If DU reports errors it cannot repair you will need to use a utility like Tech Tool Pro or Disk Warrior
Post back with update.
cornelius

Working photographer needs help with hard drives and raid O decisions

Hi new here and also new to Mac well almost new been 20 years since i had a mac. i have a Mac Pro Book and this led to ordering the MacPro since I am a working photographer i made a complete switch in platforms so i have some questions and such but I did place a order on Friday for a 2.66 4gbs of Ram , 2 500 gb hard drive and a 30 in monitor and of course the ATI 1900 XT card so yes i am waiting like many for that card.
I put initial 4gb of ram since running CS2 will at least take a max of 3gb's in the memory cache . i plan on getting 2gbs more from OWC since that seems to be the only 3rd party ram at the moment that is working correctly from reading some of the threads here. Having 6gbs is a no brainer really given the amount of Raw processing that i do along with PS work plus having e-mail and other apps open at the same time. The ram to me is the easy part although expensive . My biggest issue is what to do with the 2 hard drive slots and Raid O or not but I will start a thread on that. But i will have 6gbs total for now and the bottom line is you can never have enough ram still holds true.
Now on to my diliemma with hard drives. I did have a raid O scsi 10k rapture and and 10 k scratch on my Dell box and I am just not sure what to do here. i ordered the 2 500 gb hard drive and I may just put them on the storage side of things than get 2 WD 150gb 10 k Sata drives. Now i could Raid O them for 300 gb and get a performace boast that way or i could keep them seperate and put everything on 1 150 drive and ue the second for scratch only. What i don't know is what Mac perfers and what works better. Not worried so much about failure of drives, thats just life in the big city stuff and you just have backups. What i more worried about is performance versus a waste . seems to me that Raid O may not even be needed with these new Intel boxes with all the horsepower going on. Now the other think I notice is the WD 150gb 10 k drives are 1.5 and not 3.0 so is it really faster than the 7200 3.0 single hard drives. I read barefeats shoot out and it seems just getting the right drives in 7200 and Raid O them maybe the answer.
Okay i am not the biggest geek on the planet but I do know my stuff but this is a area that i look for more knowledge on this. So if i can get some sound advice in this area. i know there are many photographers out there like me pushing hundreds of images that could use the same advice. Now let's leave the money end out , folks sometimes think more with there wallet than what works best not that I am opposed to saving money but after spending over 7 k already on this system it becomes a moot point. LOL
www.guymancusophoto.com

Ok your question is if you should RAID O the two 150GB Raptors or not.
I think it was wise for you to get a couple of them for a boot drive with "Time Machine" coming in the next version of Mac OS X. The second drive would make a excellent bootable backup and eliminating downtime if a boot drive dies on you one morning.
In fact any boot drive cloning software that is Mac Intel ready now would do you good.
Now Barefeats has run some tests, and I can pretty much back up what they say from my own experience.
Mac OS X and apps can be helped only so much by a faster boot drive, and a single 10,000 RPM Raptor is enough, RAID O a pair is overkill.
If you install everything on the boot Raptor and keep your space hogging files (except iTunes) in new folders on another drive, even a 7,200 RPM 500GB, the two drives combined is faster as there is nearly no wait. Both drives can be accessed at the same time. Keeping the boot drive slim keeps the stylus (arm) moving as little as possible to get all the small reads/writes Mac OS X needs.
I RAID O-ed my boot drives because 74GB was the largest they had at the time, so combining them gave me speed and larger storage. I hardly use the speed, it only comes in handy if by rare chance I duplicate a 20GB folder, then I can do it in half the time of a 7,200 RPM drive.
Some of the drawbacks of a RAID O set, especially as a boot drive is that I have to auto-clone the whole set to a external drive regularly (I actually do a couple). Since the data path is separated with a RAID O, any drive failure results in total data loss.
So if you RAID O those 150GB Raptors, your going to have to clone 300GB to a external drive (or another internal) regularly, like once a week. This will take considerable time and you can't use the machine while the cloning process is going on. Sure auto-cloning software like DeJaVu can be used at night/weekends, but why bother cloning more than you have to for no big speed increase?
However if your messing with huge Photoshop files that spill over your CS2 3GB RAM limit (you need to have a "scratch" thats as fast as RAM), duplicating large files and other heavy duty drive work, then a boot RAID O will come in handy. Just remember your initial performance of 185 MB p/s will drop about 20-25% when those drives are 3/4 filled. Still 140 MB p/s is extremely good and a no worry situation.
What is worrysome is anything below 80MB p/s (I'm talking uncached 4K write speeds under X-Bench) with a new boot drive and then as time elaspes that boot drive gets filled up and loses half or more of it's inital speed. 30 MB p/s is really slow. Beachball H&LL.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard33b.html
Do Erase W/Zero in Disk Utility all new drives before laying data on them. Drives get subjected to shock which causes bad sectors on the drive. Driver software uses your data as a guinea pig to test the sectors (which you might not be able to recover the file). Zeroing does this without your data, rewriting the bad sector map so your writes are much improved, OS is more stable. etc.

I need help recovering hard-drive space...

I was doing a 35-pass-erase on my Macbook Pro for a "clean" install of Snow Leopard. Everything was fine and dandy until I noticed that I only had 216 GB after the installation. My Macbook Pro is a 250 GB model. I know the OS and iLife applications take up space, but 34 GB? Really?
I'm thinking that my install wasn't so "clean" after all. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong and what I can do to recover some GB?

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
Don't forget that the stated capacity is more than you get in reality. For example. my Powerbook has a 160GB drive that shows the capacity as 148.93GB. What does OS X say the capacity of the hard drive is? When you take that into account, you may find that the operating system install is a more reasonable size.
One thing you can do to reduce the operating system footprint is to run Monolingual, to remove languages you'll never use. Download from http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/ . If you use it, take it slowly, and don't delete English!

I cannot pass information from my Mac to my external hard drive, what can I do?

Hello,
This is my first Mac and I am new to all of it. I have an external hard drive that I use to use with my old PC . On the external hard drive box it says its compatible with both windows and Max os x. I can pass files from my external hard drive to Mac but I cannot pass files from my MacBook Air to my external hard drive. No messages comes up or anything explain why it simply doesnt allow me to do so. What can I do?

Your hard drive is formatted NTFS for windows. That format is read-only from OSx. If it's not needed on Windows anymore, you can use Disk Utility and format it for the Mac. Mac OS extended (Journaled) - Partition Map scheme of GUID Partition table.
Make sure to save any data from the drive as it will be wipped doing the above.

Need help removing hard drive from Time Machine exclusion list

I have a 1TB Western Digital Essential hard drive with about 500Gb of music, movies and other assorted data tethered directly to my iMac. I also have a 1TB Time Capsule that serves as my wireless router and connects to my iMac over the wireless network. I'm trying to use the Time Capsule as the ultimate backup device, to backup the data on my iMac and the tethered 1TB Western Digital hard drive via Time Machine. It already backs up all the data on my iMac, but unfortunately, Time Machine places the 1TB Western Digital hard drive in the exclusion list (which I understand is normal), but will not let me click the minus sign to remove the drive from the exclusion list (which is where I'm at a loss). Someone please help me find a way around this as I've been unable to find a way to remove the Western Digital drive from the exclusion list and have Time Capsule access its data. Many thanks in advance for any help with this.

gotham,
Forgive me, but are you highlighting the drive in the list before you click the "-" button?
Also, were is the external drive? Connected to your Mac or the TC. If the TC, then Time Machine won't backup the external drive. It needs to be connected to the Mac directly.
Otherwise, you can delete the TM .plist.
*Delete The Time Machine Preference .plist*
Go to --> Macintosh HD / Library / Preferences (Note: NOT Home / Library / Preferences).
Drag the .plist file labeled,
com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
to the root level of your Macs’ hard drive.
Reboot your computer.
This .plist file is automatically recreated at startup if it is missing.
You will need to reselect your Time Capsule in the TM Prefs for backup.
Now try 'removing' the other drive form the exclusion list.
Let us know if this helped resolve your issue.
Cheers!

My new iMac will not allow me to daisy chain my external hard drives - what can I do?!

I just purchased the new late 2013 iMac 27" and all is wonderful except it will NOT allow me to daisy chain my external hard drives which is a HUGE problem because I'm a professional photographer & I won't be able to access my images unless I can sort this out. I know I can purchase a new giant hard drive but i'd prefer not to because I have about 12 TB of data which will be expensive & time consuming to transfer & I'd also prefer not to have that much info tied into one device. Ultimately I will need to get a Drive with multiple bays but I'd really like a short term solution that works for the drives I currently have. Any help is GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!!

Why can't you daisy chain your drives. If it's because the iMac only has a Thunderbolt port and you have Firewire drivers purchase the Thunderport to Firewire adaptor from Apple: Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter - Apple Store (U.S.)
OT

I'm not able to save any files on an none apple external hard drive, what can i do to make it work?

I bought a omega 320GB external hard drive so a friend could save the files off an old windows laptop i had but now when i try and open the files on my mac, it doesn't let me. i'm also not able to save any file on to this hard drive either! can some one please help me?

The drive has the NTFS format, which the Mac OS can read but can't write to. Copy the files from the external drive onto your Mac, then reformat the external drive using Disk Utility, creating a Mac OS Extended volume and using the GUID partition scheme. Then you'll be able to write to the drive. Note that reformatting erases everything from the drive, so don't do it until after you've saved the drive's contents to other media.

I can't transfer files from my mac to an external hard drive. what can i do?

i have tried to transfer files from my mac to my external hard drive but i just couldn't.. help me

leemamacita wrote:
i have tried to transfer files from my mac to my external hard drive but i just couldn't.. help me
More information would help. How is the external connected? Does the external appear on your Desktop? Has the external been formatted for a Mac? What method do you use to transfer files? When you try to move a file to the external, what does happen?

Need Help cleaning Hard Drive - What can I delete?

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