Routine maintenance? Hard drive space management

As a new Mac user, what do I need to do to maintain my computer besides run the automatic updates?
1) Do I have to defrag the drive regularly like in Windows?
2) What if I move all my MP3s (250MBish) to another computer? Do I need to defrag like windows?
3) what can I do to get the most out of my 250GB hard drive?
Thanks, regards, Slurpie

1) Do I have to defrag the drive regularly like in
Windows?
No. All files 20MB or less in size are defragged automatically. Some users that do heavy duty processing on very large files (video editing, Photoshop, etc) report slight performance increases by defragging, but most don't bother and don't notice any problem.
2) What if I move all my MP3s (250MBish) to another
computer? Do I need to defrag like windows?
No, unless your files are bigger than 20MB they will be automatically defragged.
3) what can I do to get the most out of my 250GB hard
drive?
Four things:
1) Backup.
2) Backup.
3) Backup.
4) Periodically run Disk Utility, or even better, get Disk Warrior and run that. The sooner it catches errors and can repair them, the better chance you can avoid problems.

Similar Messages

Hard Drive space management?

Recently i've been starting to run out of space on my hard drive. I have nearly 250gigs of space however and I need to start sifting through and removing pointless stuff i have. It would make things much easier however if there was some sort of pie chart of way of knowing where most of the my space is being taken up. There has to be something like this to help me analyze my own hard drives space... is anything built into Tiger? any suggestions?

You can try a little app called WhatSize.
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/index.php
Regards,
Steve M.

Limiting the hard drive space on a managed account

I'm setting up a managed account and want to limet the amount of hard drive space the person gets to use
mac minni solocore Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Once again, a macosxhint comes in handy. The hint describes one way of converting an existing account:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031104223355900
Setting up a new account is easier. Just create a disk image of the desired size, making sure the name of the mounted volume is the same as the user's "home" folder (the name of the disk image doesn't matter). Uncheck the "Ignore ownership..." checkbox in "Get Info", and make sure the user owns both the mounted volume, and the dmg file. Place the disk image in the top level of the user's "home" folder, then change the ownership of the user's folder to "system" (root).
Then, from an "admin" account, enter the command below in "/Applications" > "Utilities" > "Terminal.app", substituting the user's short name for 'username', and the correct name of the disk image:<pre style="overflow:auto; padding: 5px; width: 500px ; font-size: 10px; border:1">sudo /usr/bin/nicl . -create /users/username home_loc '<home_dir><url>file://localhost/Users/username/diskimagename.dmg</url></home_dir>'</pre>But as I mentioned, there are drawbacks to using disk images and it isn't all that effective unless you hunt down every last place on the system where the user has the privileges to save files (including everybody else's "Drop Box" folders. I only mentioned it because it does get brought up as a strategy.

Managing Hard Drive space

My computer's hard drive space had been constantly shifting. For a few weeks, after removing files from my computers, I had been slowly losing hard drive space anytime I use an app, later to recovery bits of space. However, during this week, i went through a collapse of losing almost 300 MB of HD space. Then today, I lost 1 GB. I figure it might be from updating steam (although that was done the day before), but I am really freaking out from this. Can anyone suggest how I can manage my HD space?

your hard drive space will constantly chage in size depending on what you're doing.
if you have 2GB or 4GB of memory - part of your hard drive is being used as a swap file.
check your activity monitor and see how much swap file is being used by your hard drive.
mine show's zero because I have 16GB of RAM
see image below:

Best way to manage Aperture library size for hard drive space?

For a couple years, I have been using Aperture 2 and then migrated to Aperture 3. All this time I have worked completely on my laptops internal hard drive and with one library. My library is now 80gb and hard drive space is becoming an issue. Now I am trying to decide the best direction to take for reducing my internal hard drive space. My biggest storage culprit are my kids sports team pictures. I have taken thousands and thousands of pictures of kids that I don't need to keep in my internal library. I would like to pull my kids out of those pics, keep them in my main library and archive the rest out. I'm looking for advice for the best process.
I put an external drive on my Airport USB drive and put my library in a new vault last night. I know it is much slower than going direct to USB on computer. With wireless N it took about 12 hours to backup the 80gb library to a new vault on this Airport drive. Are there any issues with using the Airport USB other than speed? I know apple has issues with using time machine on this kind of setup but I don't know if Aperture has any of the same issues. My thought is that I might use this drive for additional libraries as well.
Thanks
-Erik

Once I move files to external storage as a "referenced master", is there a way to move some of them back to main library on the internal drive? I'm going to move all my team sports pictures to external but would like to keep the pictures with my kids on the internal drive where they are at. But if I unintentionally move some of my kids to the external drive, how do I "un-reference" them and move them back?
Thanks for the help!

Missing Hard Drive Space (15 GB unaccounted for)

I've had my Mini for about six months now. Love it. Everything is working perfectly except for one oddity that I'm hoping someobody can help me understand and/or correct:
I seem to be missing about 15 GB of hard drive space for no reason - at least that I can understand.
Here's what I get from the info screen on my drive:
Capacity: 74 GB
Available: 5.9 GB
Used: 68.31
All I can account for is 52.22 GB
Music: 41.11 GB
Movies: 4.33 GB
Pictures: 3.6 GB
Library: 547 MB
System: 1.81 GB
Documents 832.7 MB
Any idea why I seem to be missing 15 GB?
Thanks in advance.

I run Mac Janitor about once a week and still have
this problem. I'm assuming that is similar to the
program you mentioned.
To address that specific point: No. Mac Janitor performs one specific set of routine tasks (not all that critical - and not needed as frequently as once per week) while YASU performs a range of system-related maintenance tasks, which include those Mac Janitor handles, but go well beyond what it is capable of doing.
Yours is just such a situation where YASUs functions could prove useful in themselves, and would in any event help in narrowing down the cause of the loss of space, since it will either release the used drive space, or in failing to do so, confirm that it is being used by files. In the former case the problem is resolved, and in the latter it would then lead to use of software such as 'WhatSize' (downloadable from www.versiontracker.com) to examine the entire contents of the drive and establish exactly which files and directories are taking up what amount of storage space. Most mysterious losses of space such as yours can be readily resolved once you know where the space has gone!

Creating more hard drive space?

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out a way to get rid of stuff to increase my hard drive space. Right now I can't afford an external drive, but I bought some flash drives. I removed a bunch of Photoshop files, but it only came to about 1 GB (I currently have about 15 GB available, and I've been told more GB available can help it perform better).
Any suggestions? For instance, do I have OS9 that I can delete? Any help would be appreciated, or maybe a link to an article.
Thank you,
Allan

In order to create enough extra space for the computer system and applications to
run more efficiently, you will have to be looking into music and photo kinds of files,
where many dozens of images or music titles add up tremendously; and then choose
to save them to CD media or copy their correct files from the computer to external
drive devices. However, the USB speed in older iMac G4 is USB1.1 so that may take
quite a bit of time to get them copied over. An externally enclosed FireWire400 HDD
would be much better in speed and efficiency, to move and archive your work files.
{And when you think you've gotten the correct files you want copied, be sure they are;
because that's when you would have to erase or trash, and empty trash the originals.}
The idea to thin out the size of unused System excess, as suggested in the earlier reply,
is a good one, for gaining back the capacity used by a full install of OS X. Be sure to
remove only those items which do not affect the computer's OS function. Extra languages
and old copies of apps you don't use, some kinds of duplicate fonts (be careful there), etc.
There are utilities such as What Size, which may help to tell what kinds of content, the file
size and locations in the system; & figure out what is safer to remove, among the contents.
Not sure what Omni Sweeper or other tools do, I've heard about them but use an external
hard disk drive (have a few, USB and FW) enclosed in suitable drive housing for OS X use.
So, I usually get around some situations by other means; as part of a maintenance routine.
Good luck & happy computing!

Tally problem: Hard drive space doesn't add up.

I'm trying to work out how my laptop computes it's 80Gb hard drive space so that i can work out what to get rid of.
If I work down the icons in the left of my finder and 'get info'
it reads:
desktop 3.7 GB
applications 6.6GB
home 43.88 GB (made up of all the others plus 9.81 GB library space plus some Kb's for folders)
documents 5.36 GB
movies 9.02GB
music 14.64GB
pictures1.29 Gb
There is 2.47 GB available
Now no matter what i do, my figures tally everything up to around 53GB. and not the 74.4GB it says i have used.
Any suggestions of where i'm going wrong?
powerbook G4 15" Mac OS X (10.3.9) 2GB memory

Hi, dabbla, and welcome to Apple Discussions. If your Powerbook thinks there is only 2.47GB of free space available on your 80GB hard drive — whether or not it's right — you need to start removing things immediately, while you still can. Don't try to problem-solve or achieve any deeper understanding first: you are in a near-emergency situation that could become a dire data-loss disaster at any moment.
If you can't make any more rational decisions about what to trash first, start with whatever is already backed up elsewhere. First to go should be anything of which you have two or more backups, then things that you've backed up once and tested the backups to be sure they're good. If that doesn't free up at least 7.5 more GB of free space, trash any very large applications or application-related sample, tutorial, or template folders that you can reinstall from original installer discs after the crisis is past. You want to be looking for files and folders that are 100MB or more in size; discarding little 3MB and 10MB files or folders will never get you where to need to go.
You must maintain at least 8GB, and preferably about 12GB, of free space on an 80GB drive at all times for trouble-free operation. With as little free space as you have now, your OS is desperately short of space for its swapfiles, your Powerbook is being slowed down significantly, and you are at serious risk of crashes and data loss as your OS, applications and documents compete for the available disk space. You may be completely unable to burn DVDs or even CDs.
It's possible that you have some directory damage that is causing your Powerbook to misreport the amount of free space that is available, but you may not be able to repair the damage until you've freed up some more, because what the OS believes may matter more right now than what is actually true. As soon as you've freed up several more GB of space on your drive, boot to your Panther installer Disk 1, open Disk Utility from the Installer menu, and run the Repair Disk routine, repeatedly if necessary, until it gives you two successive "Appears OK" verdicts. You may then find that more free space is available than was reported before. If so, good.
After that, download Onyx or MacJanitor and use it to run the Daily, Weekly and Monthly Background Maintenance (cron) tasks. That should free up a bit more space and put your house in good order. You can then proceed to back up all your unbacked-up documents, if any, to other media — a FireWire hard drive is far and away the best choice. Documents that are dormant or retired and don't need to be kept ready at hand on the Powerbook can also be backed up to CDs or DVDs (so you have redundant backups of them) before you delete them from the PB's hard drive.

I have a new Windows tablet computer with limited hard drive space, and cannot transfer my itunes library to the hard drive. Can I run t media from an external hard drive? If so, how do I transfer my files?

I have a new Windows tablet computer with limited hard drive space (32 GB), and cannot transfer my itunes library to the hard drive. Can I run itunes from an external hard drive? I have tried to follow some of the directions on this site, but am having no success. Thanks.

iTunes will run fine with the media on an external drive.
However, I suggest that a tablet computer with a tiny hard drive is not ideal as the primary computer for managing an iTunes library, even a small one. If you have another machine, perhaps a big, boxy, inexpensive old desktop with a decent amount of storage, that might be a better choice.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364

How do I delete Photo Stream photos that are taking up hard drive space in my Masters folder, but not actually appearing in any event, or on the interface at all?

A couple months ago, I activated photo stream using my apple ID. I was under the impression that all the photos uploaded to my photo stream would only use server space on icloud and wouldn't actually utilize disk space, or at the most, the option was available to only download specific photos to my hard drive. My hope was that I could upload the photos to a specific drive, and view the uploaded thumbs or low-res comps on any device as a reference.
This is not the case.
What I have found is that iphoto has been automatically downloading any and all photos uploaded to my photo stream. Not just the thumbnails, the entire thumbnail + all resolutions. I shoot RAW photos so in my case, the original averages about 15-25MB per photo.
I have been uploading directly to an iphoto library on an external hard drive specifically designated for handling all my RAW high-res images.
What has been happening is all those RAW files are also being uploaded directly to my iphoto library on my iMac and eating up memory which I cannot reclaim, even after deactivating my Photo Stream in preferences. We're talking almost 100 GB of memory is tied up right now.
I don't want to just go in and start deleting files and folders in my Masters folder, since I have heard this will break iphoto, but the photos in my photostream do not show up in any event and I need to reclaim the hard drive space.
How can I safely delete them?

If the files are loose inside the iPhoto library package here's one way to get them out:
1 - open your library, select all of the photos in the library and add a unique keyword, XXXX, to all of them.
2 - Rebuild the library with iPhoto Library Manager as follows:
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
1 - download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.>Click on the Add Library button,
2 - select the library you want to add from those in the selection window.
3 - make sure that in the rebuild window the checkbox "Scavange orphaned photos" is checked.
4 - now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the Library ➙ Rebuild Library menu option
5 - in the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed. Click on the Create button.
Note 1: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments. However, books, calendars, cards and slideshows will be lost.
Note 2: Your current library will be left untouched for further attempts at a fix if so desired.
3 - open the library, create a smart album with the criterial "Keyword is not XXXX".
4 - the smart album will include those photos that were not visible in your original library. Select them and use the key combination of Command+Option+Delete to move them to the iPhoto Trash bin.
5 - empty the iPhoto Trash bin via the iPhoto ➙ Empty iPhoto Trash Bin menu option.
6 - empty the Trash bin in the Dock to remove the files from your hard drive completely.
Be sure to read Note 1 above. You can use the new library without your books, slideshow, etc. and it will not contain those errant files. Of course delete the original library if the new one is satisfactory.

Can't download applications (poss due to hard drive space issue)?

Hi there,
I'm having major hard drive issues with my MacBook Pro OS X 10.4.11 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM laptop.
I use it for video editing and also keep music on it. However for the video editing I use an external hard drive, though I've found some Final Cut Pro files on my internal hard drive before and deleted them whenever I've found them. Sometimes it's an Imovie project, sometimes a straightforward final cut project, sometimes a playout of a final cut project.
My problem is that I now have almost no hard drive space, to the point where I wasn't able to save a Word file last week due to insufficient disk space! I emptied the trash and managed to get it to save in the end.
I immediately went on to the discussions pages and it was suggested to try WhatSize, OmniDiskSweeper and Disk Inventory to identify the files that were taking up all the room. Unfortunately NONE of these applications will download onto my laptop. They're not the only ones, I tried downloading a couple of other applications for music and the like and NOTHING will download!
I went through everything that I felt I knew for certain that I could delete without being detrimental and freed up a small bit of room and tried again but still NOTHING. I then used Onyx on the suggestion of another post and freed up a few gigs (I went from 1.7gb available to 7gb available) and assumed that this would do the trick, however, it hasn't!
What happens when I try to download these (or any) applications is that when i click the "Download Now" area on the webpage it begins to move onto what should be a download progress page or a "download complete" page but instead just spends an eternity "loading", with the little loading wheel on the left of the tab just spinning around and around. I tried leaving it literally all night last night but to no avail, opened it back up again and still the circle was spinning around and around "loading". This has been the case for the several dozen attempts I've made, no matter what the website.
It seems like something of a Catch 22 if the situation is that I can't download these applications that will help me to free up Hard Drive space, because I don't have any Hard Drive space! Though I'd have thought that the 7gb I now have would be ample. Did my laptop turn to self preservation mode perhaps when the hard drive was down to the bare minimum and I wasn't even able to save word documents?
If anybody can help it'd be HUGELY appreciated...
All the best,
Rory

If you open a Finder window you can also sort by size by clicking the size column header. In view options you can also set it to calculate all sizes so it will also show folder sizes. Although not as handy as the cataloging applications you can at least start tracking down where the disk space is going. With video you can probably just copy half a dozen files off and immediately free up many GB.
Note that this isn't just a matter of convenience. OSX makes lots of temporary files and is doing it all the time. If it can't find space for those files it can result in a serious drive crash and that could cost you several hundred dollars in recovery expenses. A Sig indicates, you need space just for computer operation. I feel the % recommendation is a bit vague since people use drives ranging from 10 - 1000 GB in size. My computer regularly uses 6GB of hard drive space for temporary files, and I like to leave wriggle room, so I usually leave at least 15-20GB. You can check the temporary file usage by looking at VM in Activity monitor.
As BDaqua observes, having a crowded drive also slows down your computer. If it has to hunt for nooks and crannies in which to place bits and pieces of bigger files that takes time. Normally one does not have to worry so much about fragmentation of files on a Mac, but your scenario of working with large files on a really crowded drive may be defying that generalization.

Missing Hard Drive Space + Other Issues

My Macbook's been acting funny lately - it wouldn't always come out of sleep, and every now and then an application would crash but its icon would stay in the Dock and there would be no way to get rid of it. When I tried typing in my password on the login screen (when it was coming out of sleep) the field would keep losing focus and delete everything in it. I have the 120GB hard drive (It says 111, but I assume that's the 1024 vs 1000 thing), and about a year and a half ago it failed, but I brought it to the Apple Store and they gave me a new one, which has been working fine.
The macbook had been doing some weird stuff, so I've been using the computer I'm typing on for the last few weeks, but two days ago I decided to reset the PRAM and SMC and try using the macbook again. It was working fine, but then I locked the screen and did something else for a while. I went to go shut it down that night, and it wouldn't show me the login screen for unlocking the screen, and it showed me the spinning cursor instead. I just shut the top, and the next morning it was just giving me a black screen when I opened the top.
I held down the power button to shut it off, and later in the day turned it back on again, and it seemed to be working. I was running a few applications (Firefox, Bitpim, and Transmission) when it started crashing again. The menu bar didn't work, the dock wouldn't show, keyboard shortcuts didn't work, etc. I shut the top and went somewhere for a few hours.
I came back, and was going to shut down the computer by holding the power button, so while it was still in sleep I unplugged both of my external hard drives. When I unplugged the USB one it turned on the computer, so I opened it, typed in my password, and plugged the drives back in. The computer seemed to be working again, but about a minute later a window popped up saying my startup disk's space was low. When I'd shut the top that morning there had been around 40 - 50GB left, but now there was about 500MB left on the disk. The size of my User folder was still the same - around 20GB, and I'm trying to see the size of the System folder now, but the hard drive is being extremely slow. I'm also trying to use Disk Inventory X, but it's taking an extremely long time (like 10 minutes for a file that's only a few KB).
The dock also seems to be "frozen" - no new applications I open show in the dock, even if I'm using them, and when I clicked to open them in finder they showed up in my recently opened folder in the Dock, but didn't actually open. I clicked on them again through that folder and they actually open, but it still doesn't show them in finder. Applications that I've quit (and their process is gone in Activity Monitor) are still in the Dock with the little dot under them that they're open.
The Macbook is still under warranty, but I live far away from the closest Apple Store, and it would be difficult for me to get anyone to drive me there, so I'd prefer some sort of a solution where I wouldn't need to bring it in (But I know I'll probably need to, and I will be able to, just not for a week or two).
Are any of the problems related? Is there anything I can do on my own to fix it? Should I try rebooting it, even if the hard drive is almost empty (Doesn't that cause problems booting it?), or should I wait until Disk Inventory X finishes first?
Edit: There was a folder in /Volumes that had the name of my external hard drive, and had some files in it (The ones that were being used in Transmission), so I deleted those and got the hard drive space back. All of the other problems are still happening though - my dock is still all screwed up, etc.
Message was edited by: cfogel

Also, some more details:
I while ago I tried rebooting and it just gave me a gray screen and played the startup chime over and over, but I held down the power button and tried again and it worked. However, when I boot it stays on the gray screen for a while before it shows me the apple logo, then it stays on that for a while before it shows me the spinning thing that it's loading. Also, once it boots it hangs on a blue screen for a while before letting me log in.
When I look in Console there's always a million "Feb 5 18:19:58 localhost kernel[0]: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad: family specific matching fails" for every piece of hardware from every boot.
For a while when I tried verifying my hard drive using Disk Utility it crashed the computer. I've tried repairing permissions, checked my SMART status, and used various maintenance tools.

If i download my photos into iPhoto does that use up more hard drive space?

If I download my photos into iPhoto does that use up more hard drive space on my mac?

iPhoto and Lightroom are similar apps - although LR is a far more capable app - and that the price it should be, of course. But the two apps are similar in that they both offer
Photo Management
Non-Destructive Processing
So, essentially, they both play the same part in the workflow.
The procedure would be to
Download the images from the camera into the Photo Manager (regardless of which one you choose)
Review and select in the Manager
Trash the unwanted with the Manager
Process the images - that is, in most cases edit them.
It is at this point - and only this point - that Photoshop might come into play. Both of these apps can act as a 'front-end' for Photoshop - after all, they're the Managers. But in truth, if you're using Lightroom then you very likely do not need Photoshop at all, and for anything that does require layers you can use one of the many - much less expensive - alternatives. But I think the common experience is that with Lightroom (like Aperture) the requirement for the sledgehammer that is Photoshop really fades away.
So pick one horse and ride it. Choose between LR and iPhoto. Use it like it's intended. Don't get involved in other necessary apps. Don't review before bringing the photo into the manager - that's what the manager is for.

Lack of hard drive space overnight and oddity at login prompt.

I have recently seen something weird on my iMac. At the login prompt my computer reads: "My Computer (2)" it never did previously. Then when I checked my hard drive space it was at 110 GB available, it now is 50 GB available. What is this issue? Is the whole hard drive copied or something weird. It is also very slow with Adobe CS4 and this was never an issue.

HI and Welcome to Apple Discussions...
Boot from your Mac install disc and run Disk Utility in case the startup disk needs repairs.
Insert your install disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
Go to Installer menu 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. It should say: 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.
When you are finished with DU, from the Menu Bar, select Utilities/Startup Manager.
Select your start up disk and click Restart
While you have the Disk Utility window open, look at the bottom of the window. Where you see Capacity and Available. *Make sure there is always 10% to 15% free disk space*
If you cannot boot from your install disc, try booting in Safe Mode
What is Safe Mode
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Adobe AIR installation took away 10 gb of hard drive space. Why?

Hello all,
I recently downloaded the Mac app You Need a Budget (YNAB). The app told me it needed to install Adobe AIR, which I allowed it to do. Since installing Adobe AIR, the amount of empty hard drive space I have decreased from about 16 gb to 4.5 gb. Furthermore, my entire system is running really slowly and I am concerned that it could crash at any time. I used a program called App Zapper to delete Adobe AIR, but the lack of hard drive space the Adobe AIR installation caused persists.
I had this happen once before with a previous version of Adobe AIR, and uninstalled that as well. I would like to continue using the YNAB program, but not if it is going to cause my hard drive to lose 10 gb of space and to slow down significantly. Does anyone have any advice? Thank you.
Best,
Anne-Marie

Hello Anne-Marie,
AIR runtime is Adobe's software solution that 3rd party software vendor (YNAB) used to build their software. It does not necessarily mean that AIR runtime itself took 10Gb of your hard drive - there could be other possible cases (like incorrect software update routine that cannot delete temporary files, some issue strictly specific to your machine configuration, etc, etc).
They have general topic support forum for customers:
http://www.youneedabudget.com/forum/ynab-f38/
with section to post technical difficulties when using software:
http://www.youneedabudget.com/forum/technical-difficulties-f74/
kind regards,
Peter

Routine maintenance? Hard drive space management

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