Startup disk full? Help with clean up.

I have an older Macbook w/ a 60GB hard drive. I have ~27GB of music a few of movies and a few of pics. Is there a way to scan the drive, delete duplicates or clean up the hard drive automatically?
I need to create space and suspect there may be a lot of useless files and/or duplicate pics in multiple folders. Any advice would be helpful.
Thanks

Freeing Up Hard Disk Space - Mac GuidesFreeing Up Hard Disk Space - Mac Guides

Similar Messages

"startup disk full" message-recommend 'cleaning' software please?

What's the safest way to 'clean' my MacBookPro - to make room for startup disk... I've heard terrible things about MacKeeper. Your recommendations please!

Running maintenance tasks and freeing up disk space are two different things.
Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you have a minimum of 15% free disk space.
Avoid MacKeeper.
Let your Mac do maintenance for you. No third party utillty apps required.
Mac OS X: About background maintenance tasks
As for making more space available, help here > Freeing Up Hard Disk Space - Mac Guides

Startup Disk Full Error - Please help

Dear ALL,
I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message.
I have no clue as to how to correctly fix this issue. I looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available, which I would have thought would have been ample space. I have started to remove unwanted files and backup to CD large image files. So this should free up some more space. The question is will this be enough to get rid of this issue and is it associated with the amount of HD space on my drive? or would I need to run some script etc? or download/buy some other product to fix this?
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Max

OK I tried Macaroni...and when I tried to work with a TIFF file I get the same Startup Disk is FULL message. The I get an adobe message saying Scratch Disk is FULL.
Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

Adobe Photoshop Scratch Disk Full/Startup Disk Full error - PLEASE HELP

Dear ALL,
I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message. Never happended before.
Since my initial post I downloaded Macaroni (utility) and have run the daily/weekly/monthly backups, checked the /private/var/vm and /private/var/log and /Volumes. Nothing unusual there...
When I started getting this error I had 32GB left on a looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available on a 152GB drive. Now after deleting I have 76GB capacity left.
But when I tried to open a Photoshop PSD or TIFF file and do a crop I still get tge Startup Disk is Full error followed by the Adobe Photoshop error Scratch Disk is Full.
I am thinking of running the Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and doing a Verify Disk and Verify Disk Permissions followed by Repair Disk Permissions. I will be logged into the machine whilst doing this. Is there any danger in this as I have read elsewhere that I need to do this from a bootable volume. If that is the case how do I create a bootable disk/cd? If not then what is the cure to my Disk Full as surely there is now nearly 50% FREE!!!!!
Please help.
Max

PS will always use the boot disk for scratch to some extent even with an alternate primary scratch disk.
Be sure to turn off Spotlight as it causes problems.
4GB of RAM would be nice, I understand small files don't work well if there is more than 4GB RAM but large files will. OS X uses free RAM as cache and RAM disk before using disk drives.
How much RAM is allocated to PS? More RAM would help.
A dedicated lean boot drive helps. Install just what is needed for your work, use a separate drive for data, and yet another RAID volume for scratch.
When in doubt, backup with SuperDuper, and do an erase and then restore. Always backup before repairing; and never, ever, use an old version of Tiger CD/DVD - like 10.4.2 on 10.4.7/.8. Use "fsck" instead, or your emergency boot drive.
Also, give Applejack a shot and delete the cache folders and swap files from time to time to keep a system humming. CS/CS2 and Tiger benefit nicely from more RAM.

Help: Premiere is making my startup disk full, but I set everything to go on an external hard drive.

The iMac I am using is for the sole purpose of editing and nothing else. I have no idea what is making my startup disk full, and I can not locate the files that are filling the startup disk except the fact that it is telling me I am running out of space. The startup disk is a 250GB SSD, the second internal drive is 1 TB HDD. All of my premiere and video files are loaded ton a 4TB G-RAID.

Do you have your projects set to use a drive other than startup?
My 3 hard drives to edit AVCHD are configured as...
1 - 320Gig Boot for Win7 64bit Pro and ALL program installs
2 - 320Gig data for Win7 paging swap file and video project files
When I create a project on #2 drive, the various work files follow,
so my boot drive is not used for the media cache folders and files
3 - 1Terabyte data for all video files... input & output files

"Startup disk full" - I have at least 15 GB left - after restart back to OK

Hi all !
I'm starting to get these error messages that my +"startup disk is almost full"+ even though there is at least 15 GB left, for sure...
After rebooting things go back to normal but I need to take care of this...
Any ideas what to do ???
Thanx for Your help !
pz

perzennstrom:
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
What is the total capacity of your HDD? You need to maintain a minimum of 15% of total disk capacity as contiguous free space. This allows for free space for swap files and for growing the Extents Overflow file of the directory. Since you need contiguous space, maintaining a buffer of 20% of disk capacity gives you a safer margin.
What can you do?
•For one you can slim down your HDD. Dr. Smoke's FAQ Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk has helpful suggestions for removing items on your drive that will free up space. I would begin there.
•Next, since your free space comes back after a restart suggests that your computer is using a lot of disk space for swap files. You can check this by going to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor. Select the System Memory tab and check the pages in and pages out. If the pages out are more that the pages in it means your computer is using the HDD for swap files. Additional RAM can help this situation. If you have not already done so, maxxing out your RAM will be in order.
•A third measure would be to defrag your disk to create more contiguous space.
•And fourth, you should seriously consider installing a new and larger HDD. This will give you more storage capacity, more room for swap files and for directory expansion. It will significantly improve the performance of your computer.
•Meanwhile, be sure to maintain a backup of your stuff. I suggest a bootbable clone on an external firewire HDD using a utility like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
Please do post back with further questions or comments.
cornelius

This is baffling me...Startup Disk Full issue

Dear Members,
Yesterday I posted on this forum for some help with resolving a Startup Disk Full message that was appearing when I was using Adobe PhotoShop CS. This only started to happen recently ( 2 days ago). When I try and crop a TIFF or RAW file I get the Scratch Disk Full and the Startup Disk Full errors.
So I followed your advise and made backups, rebooted from an external CD (Tiger osx) and did the repair thing. There was minor header damage at the time. But this was fixed. I did a small test with Photoshop and all appeared OK, that is until this morning. I tried to edit/crop a TIFF file and I got the same messages again.
I have approx 152GB of total disk space now and after deleted/re moving to external media, I have approx 82GB of available space. I also have 2 GB of RAM. Yes I removed the files prior to doing the Disk Utility repair. And yes I did run Repair Permissions too. I have been using this setup for over a year with no issues, and YES the TIFF and RAW files have always been huge (approx 35MB).
What is baffling me now is why do I still get this error message. I took the liberty to re-run Disk Utility from external bootable CD and the Verify showed everything to be fine. So my questions are:
1. why am I still getting this error?
2. Am I at risk of damaging my system in any way?
3. How can I fix this issue?
Any help/pointers appreciated.
Max

OK Guys I think I have solved my problem.
In my desperation to find meaning to why this was happening I stumbled across another forum where a user had a slightly related issue -> http://kubotaworkshops.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1028&sid=5e2982e3da6027f683997 ffbcf088d59
In there he had mentioned a root cause of a related issue. Immediately I checked to see what the settings for the Crop tool were set to, and to my surprise they were at 300inches x 400 inches at 300 dpi. According to his calculations this put the Scratch Disk size at pretty large.
Anyway I am not quite sure on his mathematics and how he arrived at the 60.3GB file size, but I am guessing that my files were large to start with and somehow the scratch disk size needed was even larger, hence the reason for the error. Would appreciate if someone can explain how the 60.3GB was derived from a 100K file, 400x600inc @ 300dpi as in the link above
Hopefully this was the fix. I have tried it out and I am able to crop. But then again thats what I said yesterday
Max

Startup disk full error - boots normally but won't start finder

I'm having a problem in which my iMac when it boots gives me an error that the startup disk is full, but other than that it can boot normally and allow me to log in, but after that the startup stalls. I never get past the default "outer space" desktop image and finder never starts, so there's no icons, no dock, and nothing on the menu bar. What's weird is that Safari and Mail start and I can see them because I believe I have them starting automatically at boot. Safari works (I'm using it now to enter this discussion). Mail on the other hand starts but is hung checking for the servers for incoming mail.
I've tried to boot in safe mode (holding down Shift key at startup), but it doesn't work.
I've tried to boot in single user mode (holding down cmd-S at startup), but it doesn't work either.
I've tried to boot from Snow Leopard installation media (holding down C at startup), but it doesn't work as well.
Each time I try one of these alternate boot methods, it just takes me to the normal login screen with the startup disk full message. I click OK, login, and get stuck.
I'm just trying to get the finder started so that I can delete some files, but I just can't get that far. It's strange that the browser works perfectly and internet connection is fine, but nothing else works.
Thoughts? Thanks. - Mike

Hi Lina, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
Safe Mode might allow you to boot and free up some space.
If you have access to another Mac and a FireWire cable, another option would be to use FireWire Target Disk Mode to transfer data to the other Mac and delete it on your MBA.
If either way works, you want to open up somewhere around 15% free space. Once you do that, run Repair Disk: Boot from install disc (insert disc>restart>immediately hold down c key and keep holding it until you see “Preparing Installation”)>at first screen select the language and click Continue> click on the Utilities Menu in the menu bar>open Disk Utility>select your HD in the panel on the left side>click Repair Disk at bottom of main window. Run this at least twice, and keep running it until it says “appears ok” twice in a row. If that doesn’t happen, you may need a stronger utility such as DiskWarrior or if the directory is damaged beyond repair, you may need to reinstall the OS, or you may have a damaged HD (repair utilities can only repair the directory structure, not the HD itself).
Ultimately, though, it sounds like you need a larger HD . . . .

What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error?

What do i need to do when i get a startup disk full error? I can't update software or use my MacAir at all.

Empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. If you use iPhoto, empty its internal Trash first:
iPhoto ▹ Empty Trash
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 free 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. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your 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.
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 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. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the 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
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.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the files.
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 in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Startup Disk Full shows up

Dear Sir,
Please help me to solve this problem,
My Macbook Pro shows some errors 'Startup Disk Full',
and the bad thing is,it shows after i on my Macbook and the popup comes up before i can entering the menu,
So what should i do now?

It's after 2am her in the US.
Can you start up in safe mode? If so, empty your trash if there is anything in there. Also, start deleting some files or transfer them to an external disk.
Mac OS X 10.6: Starting up in safe mode
Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
Going to bed now. The night owls will need to take over from here if you need further help.

WHAT I DO WHEN THE SCREEN IS BLUE BECAUSE Startup Disk FULL?

WHAT I DO WHEN THE SCREEN IS BLUE BECAUSE Startup Disk FULL?

Have a look to this post : Blue Screen on Startup with MacBook Air Rev A (fitted with Hard Drive)

I keep getting "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files/documents to an external hard disk

Dear all,
What should I do? I keep getting the "startup disk full" message even when I already moved all my files and documents to an external hard disk.
Thanks a heap.

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article.
Empty 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 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 free 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.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your 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.
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 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 ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the 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
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 (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 with the largest at the top. It may take a few minutes for ODS to finish scanning your files.
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 in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

Startup disk full on new Macbook Pro

I bought a Late 2013 13 inch 8 gb Macbook Pro to replace a mid 2010 that had hung up during an update and seized up. I migrated a backup of the 2010 to the 2013 and immediately began getting "startup disk full" notices. I mainly use it for pictures and music and very little document type stuff. I have emptied the trash and repaired permissions and emptied email and downloads etc. I can't figure out what is taking up my space. Storage looks like this, 16.94 free of 250.14. Other storage 166 gb, Apps 37 gb, Photos 14 gb, Movies 5 gb, Audio 10 gb. Any suggestions?

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.

Startup Disk Full -- Weird

I'm on my Mac Pro as seen below. My main disk has boot camp partition.
Macintosh HD:
U: 73gb
F: 102gb
Windows:
U: 12gb
F: 3gb
In Photoshop CS3, when doing some light photoshop work, I OSX throws up "Startup disk full" and then CS3 throws "Scratch Disk full." Very strange as you can see my main disk has 102gb of free space. I checked the scratch disk settings in CS3 and confirmed that they are on the right drive.
Any thoughts?

I was having the same issue yesterday, I have since reset Safari (of all things?) and haven't had the issue since. Must be an issue with 10.5.2, it never happened before.

Renaming startup disk to begin with a dot

I realized that 10.6 prevents you from renaming a startup disk to begin with a dot (a period), so that you can hide the volume on the desktop/Finder. I've tried the diskutil rename command in terminal, but it gives me an error saying some like "not suitable name for drive type." It worked in 10.5, but not Snow Leopard. Well, for me at least. Anyone else have this problem? Thanks.
P.S. Not sure exactly where I should have posted this. I guess it's related to Finder.

DO NOT start the name of the drive with a dot. if you want to make it hidden from finder (not sure why you'd want to do it with the startup drive) you can add a hidden flag to the drive.
run this in terminal
sudo chflags hidden /
and it will hide the startup drive from finder. to unhide it change hidden to nohidden in the command. and of course you can just go to finder preferences->general and uncheck the box to show internal drives on the desktop. that will remove all internal drives from teh desktop.

Macbook air startup disk full, after removed 149GB pic folder

After I removed ALL pictures worth of 149GB, I still get the "startup disk full" message. It pops out all the time, more than frustrating, my air is not just a typewriter.

After trashing the pictures did you empty the trash? Look under the Finder menu.

Startup disk full? Help with clean up.

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