Start up drive is full

I keep message for the updates that the start up disk is full. I have deleted all unnecessary files and I cannot get the GBs down.

Well I finally got the iTunes folder pulled up, which I could not get into earlier, and deleted a lot of old downloads. That freed up 20GB

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Start-up drive full - when its not

Yesterday I rebuilt my xserve, with leopard OSx server. I've just got a message saying that the start-up drive is full, and when I get info on the drive, it is showing it as full. However, I've only installed the OS, nothing else! Not only that, when I go and get info on all the folders in the start-up drive, they total to less than 10 gb. I have three 148.42 GB discs, one being the startup and the other two will be for images when I get to it.
Has anyone got any ideas to what is taking up all the room?

Hi
+"Has anyone got any ideas to what is taking up all the room?"+
For lack of any details possibly a runaway log. Won't be the first time. I've seen the Samba log bloat to 200Gb and more for no apparent reason. The Print Service can also hang onto stale print jobs for no apparent reason. On the Server and if you're able to launch Terminal and issue:
sudo du -chxd 1 /
Be patient as it will take some time. If for some reason you can't run the command on the server itself use it via ssh. If that's not possible target disk mode the server to another mac and run the command again making sure you use the appropriate path.
Tony

I have an iMac 5.1 with Mac OSX 10.6.8 and 2 GB memory and an L2 cache of 4 GB. lately I have been receiving error messages of " start up disk almost full; please delete files." is the start up disk the same thing as the hard drive?

I have an iMac 5.1 with Mac OSX 10.6.8 and 2 GB memory and an L2 cache of 4 GB. lately I have been receiving error messages of " start up disk almost full; please delete files." is the start up disk the same thing as the hard drive? I opened the hard drive and from the column on the left of the menu I've selected "search for" and under that " all images" then "all documents" I've deleted a few files from each. Are documents and images that I have deleted from here also deleted from the folders on my desktop?

You should never, EVER let a conputer hard drive get completely full, EVER!
With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.
If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.
Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.
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 store images in other locations other than iPhoto, then you will have to weed through these to determine what to archive and what to delete.
If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive to disc, flash drives or external hard drive, older emails you want to save.
Delete any other mail in your Junk folders. Also, look through your Sent Mail to see if there is anything that can be deleted.
Other things you can do to gain space.
Once you have around 15 GBs regained, do a search, download and install OmniDisk Sweeper.
This app will help you locate files that you can move/archive and/or delete from your system.
STAY AWAY FROM DELETING ANY FILES FROM OS X SYSTEM FOLDER!
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive to disc, flash drives, ext. hard drives or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Look in your Applications folder, if you have applications you haven't used in a long time, if the app doesn't have a dedicated uninstaller, then you can simply drag it into the OS X Trash icon. IF the application has an uninstaller app, then use it to completely delete the app from your Mac.
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
When you install and launch it, let it do its initial automatic tests, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run the maintenance tabs that 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.
move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
Good Luck!

My start up disk is full and I need to move my files to an external hard drive, how do i do so?

My start up disk is full and i need to move my files to an external hard drive, how do i do so?

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

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.

How do I add microsoft office to an external hard drive when my start up disc is full?

I have installed adobe collection and final cut studio on my macbook pro. That being said my start up disk is full and I need microsoft office so I was wanting to know how I could add microsoft office to and external hard drive without deleting the whole adobe collection and reinstalling because I can't put office on my computer. Also I have a 120 gb solid state hard drive so hard drive kit would be expensive to replace and a hassle to redownload programs.

When you say full, how full do you mean? If you are under 10% of free space, you are headed for a big crash. I hope you have everything backed up.
You can copy MS office to an external drive but you don't want to run it, or any other program from an external drive, inclduing flash drives. You'd be much better off moving your music, photos, and/or documents to the external and putting your applications that you are using on the MBP hard drive. If you need to use the music, photos or documents, then drag them individually over to the MBP. Adobe CS and MS Ofice should definitely reside on the hard drive, no question about it.

Start up drive full on 4 week old MBA

Hello,
I received a message ths morning regarding my start up drive being almost full. When I have looked at the breakdown I have around 16GB of photos, music & Apps & 96GB of other. What is this other & where has it come from? Does anyone have any tips about how to find it (without the use of complex programmes).
I have emptied my Trash & the Safari Cache.
Thanks!!

Hi,
I've just run the disc inventory X & I have a couple of odd things
Mail Message @ 79.6 GB 8641 files
Documents @ 8.3GB 80229 files
Do you think this is the time machine back up? I've deleted all my old messages as they've come through & I only have about 3 documents on.
I tried disabling the local back ups, via terminal using the command
sudo tmutil disablelocal
It doesn't seem to have made any difference though (not sure if I used it right??)
Thanks for your help so far.

I can not get the new updates because my start disc and hard drive are full, I need 1.98 GB.

I can not get the new updates because my start disc and hard drive are full, I need 1.98 GB.

Some folks recommend OmniDiskSweaper to allow you to review your stuff to find possible candidates to throw away.
Even if you throw away some stuff and your desired "1.98GB", then what? If that's the number you need for the update, you'll just use most or all of the reclaimed space with the update and you are right back to where you started.
You don't specify what kind of machine you got but presumably it's a mac pro since you posted in the Mac Pro community. In which case just get yourself another drive or two and move stuff around to free up your boot drive.
[Perhaps you should hurry too since I expect hdd prices might be going up due to possible impending hdd shortages.]
Finally, if some of those updates are major system updates you want extra drives for backups because I always recommend you never do major updates to your system without backups to that system.

My start up disk is full I want to transfer files to my external hard drive how do I do that

Mac Book Air start up disk is full
I moved my iTunes to an external drive
But this keeps happening
Any ideas?

time machine or keep your collection of large media files on an external HD
To show HD on desktop
go into FINDER at top then PREFERENCES then GENERAL tab
then check "hard disks" and "external disks"
You already moved your music to your ext. HD, why are you having any issues to transfer anything else?
check your SSD contents in your Air
See here for answer about the OTHER which is taking up space:
http://pondini.org/TM/30.html
and here:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
See Kappys excellent note on the rest of “other” files taking up your space:
What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?

My 'start up drive' is almost full, and running slow. I transferred all my music to an external drive, but still getting messages. What is the best way to get rid of unneeded files.

I am deleting or burning to CD photos I dont use regularly. What else can I do?
Does a full hard drive and slow machine warrent upgrading to a new one?

I have 13 GB free out of 250GB
That's tight. Rule of thumb for a start up drive - the one inside the Macbook - is to have atleast 15% free at all times.
For getting rid of unnecessary stuff off the internal drive, I suggest you try Omni Disk Sweeper. It will give you a complete inventory of your drive, and purge what you ask it to delete. But be patient when it runs, give it time to do a full sweep.
It's the second one on this page: http://www.omnigroup.com/more
Hard drives are not that expensive. If I were you I would invest in another external drive for your library.

My hard drive is full and m macbookpro doesnt start.spinning wheel

Hard drive is full and my macbookpro doesn't start.Spinning wheel.
What can i try ?Any ideas?

If OS X is reporting you need to remove some items you obviously have a more severe issue.
To fix your issue is likely too complicated and lengthy to go into all of it here as it sounds like a OS X issue, it will require the services of person very familiar and experienced with Mac's to first recover your data and then restore OS X back to a functional state which may or may not require new hardware/software installed.
If your under warranty or AppleCare, take it in for service.
You can also hire the services of a local Mac computer support technician experienced in these matters.
Have them look at your Wifi, RAM amount, extra storage and computer backup proceedures in the process.
Good Luck.

My brand new macbook pro shows shows that my had drive is filled with 481 gb of other!!! mac keeps showing me that my start up disk is full. what can other be???

mac keeps showing me that my start up disk is full. what can other be???

Where did my Disk Space go?
Slimming your hard drive
OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.
SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.

Start-up hard drive is full but need to upgrade to new version of I-Photo

I need to move my I-Photo library to my external hard drive because my Start-up disk is full. When I plug in my EHD and try to view a folder, I get the message that the iphoto library needs to be upgraded to work with this version of I-Photo. I haven't moved photos yet and I haven't tried to download because I'm guessing I can't download anything new since my start-up disk is full. It seems like a "Catch-22." What should I do?

Thank you for responding. I tried to move my music file first which didn't work and then documents which didn't work. When trying to move both to the trash after moving to EHD, I got a message stating "documents/music can't be modified or deleted because it's required by MacOSX. I tried the music file first and when that didn't work, I chose the documents file. I feel like I am constantly running into roadblocks like this.

Unable to capture because drive is full

I just hooked up a new 500GB external drive (which we will called Media 2) since my old one took a dump. I have formated it to be compatable with Mac instead of windows. I have changed my scratch disks to save to Media 2. When capturing a Hi8 tape, after 9:25:31 the capture stops and tell me that my drive is full. Now I can start the capture again, and it stops at 9:25:31 and again tells me my drive is full. I can again restart the capture, and again it stops at 9:25:31 with the same message. I have not clicked the box that limits my capture volume. Any ideas? As I'm typing this, I have this idea. Would doing a disk repair on the Media 2 drive possibly be the solution?

It sounds like the disk format is wrong. FAT32-formatted drives permit a maximum file size of 2GB, which is about 9:25 of standard-definition dv. You disk should be formatted Mac OS Extended.

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.

Start up drive is full

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