Startup disk is full but I don't have much on the Mac

I have a new Mac Book Pro and have loaded a few programs on it ..but do not have much else on it...and now its telling me that my sratch disk is full and will not let me do much of anything on it....

'Scratch disc' is usually something that PhotoShop or Video Editors use, do you have another Volume/Disc attached there or just the one hard drive ?
If you need to see what's using space on a volume use Disc Inventory X or What Size
If using PhotoShop run it, open the Preferences and adjust the Scratch disc size allocation downwards.

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Start Up Disk is Full but i don't have much on my Mac!!!

Hello, I am trying to download and use Cord for work as well as update my iTunes to the newest release, however it says I do not have space!!!! I moved 9k photos to an external HD yesterday and deleted them from iPhoto as well as have an empty trash can, I took a screen shot of what my memory under about this mac says, someone please help, I literally have zero pics on this computer, and about 900 songs, most of which are in the cloud because it says I do not have enough memory to download them, I am at a loss, and fairly computer savvy less!!!!
I do not even know how I got to hard drives and what could possible be taking up so much spacE!!!!!
Thank you!!

Thank you for the quick response!!! I have NO idea how this happened either, I was trying to install yosemite and it has been messed up since, it did install yosemite but since then I have zero memory, this is a shot of my disk utility, will you kindly walk me through the steps you would take to start over? I have my music and photos backed up so starting from scratch is a very viable option for me, thank you for your time and help!!

My Macbook air keeps getting a message saying that the startup disk is full. I don't have picture, music, or movies on it. Im not sure whats wrong with it.

My Macbook air keeps getting a message saying that the startup disk is full. I don't have picture, music, or movies on it. Im not sure whats wrong with it.

The first step is to check and see how much space really is there. From the desktop right click on the drive in the upper right corner (at least it's there by default) and select "Get Info" to see how much space it reports as free.
It's not just media files that eat up disk space, though they are often a major contributor. Do you happen to be running one of the virtual machine programs (Parallels or VMWare Fusion)? When you create a guest drive there you normally have a fairly decent amount of disk space dedicated to it and that can fill the drive.
As well, a quick fix that may buy you some time is to empty the trash if you've not done so recently. Click on the trash folder in your dock and then in the window that comes up select the option to empty the trash.
If you can free up some space, there are programs that will help you find what files and directories are using disk space. I've used Space Gremlin (in the App store) for that sort of thing, though there others. If you run that sort of utlity you'll get some idea about what is really eating up the drive space.

It shows startup disk is full but i use just only 350gb of my hd disk from 500gb.

my macbook shows its startup disk is full but i use just 350gb of my 500gb hd.

That pretty clearly shows the drive is full. So first a question: Why do you believe there's an error? How do you know there's only 350 GB in use? Second is to do the following:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions - Lion
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
Again, check your drive usage for any changes.

Hi, i had created a form on adobe forms central, but i don't have access to the results now. any help would be appreciated.

Hi, i had created a form on adobe forms central, but i don't have access to the results now. any help would be appreciated.

Hi massif76198910,
I don't see that you had a paid FormsCentral account. Were you using the free account? If so, you should still have access to the form until FormsCentral is retired on July 28 2015,
Are you able to log in? Or do you get an error when you try to log in to your account? Please try clearing the browser cache, or logging in via a different browser.
Best,
Sara

I'm trying to get access to a very old AppleID, but I don't have access to the email associated with the account anymore and it's saying my birthday is wrong. Can someone help?!

I'm trying to get access to a very old AppleID, but I don't have access to the email associated with the account anymore and it's saying my birthday is wrong. Can someone help?!

If you can't get the account's password reset via http://appleid.aple.com then try contacting Support in your country, they should (after they've confirmed your id and that it's your account) be able to reset it for you.
Contacting Apple about account security : http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5699
If your country isn't on that page then try this form and explain and see what they reply with : https://ssl.apple.com/emea/support/itunes/contact.html
After it's been reset change the primary email address on the account to be an address that you have access to : Change your Apple ID.
And check/correct the date of birth on the account (select the Password And Security section on the account on http://appleid.apple.com, answer the security questions, and on the next screen the DoB should show).

I keep getting a message "Your startup disk is full" but it isn't

I keep getting a message "Your startup disk is full" and my space on the HD fluctuates every second. I have 113 Gbs of free space, but it disappears within seconds and reappears again and repeats.

Yes you should back it up.
Do you have the OS 10.6 disk? You will need it. If you don't have it, you can get one here:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
The repair disk procedure does not erase anything on the drive. But before you go any further you should back it up.

Startup disk almost full but cannot log on to delete items

when I start up my MacBook air it said "start up disk almost full" but I cannot even log on my act to get to my home screen to attempt to delete stuff... what do I do?

Step 1
The first step in dealing with a startup failure is to secure the data. If you want to preserve the contents of the startup drive, and you don't already have at least one current backup, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data that has changed since the last backup, you can skip this step.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to start. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
a. Start up from the Recovery partition, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) When the OS X Utilities screen appears, launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.” The article refers to starting up from a DVD, but the procedure in Recovery mode is the same. You don't need a DVD if you're running OS X 10.7 or later.
b. If Step 1a fails because of disk errors, and no other Mac is available, then you may be able to salvage some of your files by copying them in the Finder. If you already have an external drive with OS X installed, start up from it. Otherwise, if you have Internet access, follow the instructions on this page to prepare the external drive and install OS X on it. You'll use the Recovery installer, rather than downloading it from the App Store.
c. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, start the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
d. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.
Step 2
You might be able to start up in safe mode even though you can't start up normally. Otherwise, start up from an external drive, or else use the technique in Step 1b, 1c, or 1d to mount the internal drive and delete some files. 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.

My computer says startup disk is full but it isn't. Is there a fix?

I'm getting a message saying my startup disk is full, and I need to delete files. However, I'm only using about 15% of my hard drive (macbook is less than a year old). Any suggestions what might be going on?

How do you know you're only using 15% of the hard drive?
There could be a number of things going on. In the first instance, I'd run Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and use it to run Verify Disk.
Bob

Error message says startup disk is full but I have 611 GB available on HD?

Keep getting message that the startup disk is full. Checked and have 611GB available on the HD. Help!

"...When I look at the get info screen it says 24mb left..."
What did you do a get info on?

My iPod doesn't have enough room but I don't have much on it. It's the generation 4 itouch

It keeps on saying j don't have enough room but it's brand new and I don't have much on it. I know it needs a System update is tht the only prob

Connect the iPod to your computer and click on the iPod underDevices in iTunes. At the bottom if the screen they should be a color coded bar showing the usage of the storage on the iPod. Report back on the usages by categories.
Could it be that iTunes is elling you that the computer does not have enough free disk space?
When are you getting the message and what is the exact wording of the message?

"Startup Disk Almost Full" But 190gb Free?

So I recently downloaded a program (MCMap Live) to make an image of my Minecraft world.
I ran it the first time and it took up all my RAM like expected, but gave me issues.
So I try to run it again without any other programs besides Finder running and my Mac started puking out this error that my startup disk was almost full and I had to kill some apps or delete files.
I open Finder and it tells me I have over 190gb of free space...
I ignored the warning and after the program was finished and I restarted, my airport card stopped working. So I restart again.
The airport card turns back on, but now I can't run any intensive programs because that error about my startup disk keeps coming back and shutting them down.
Does anyone know what is going on and how to fix it?
MacBook Pro Late 2008
2.53GHz
4G Ram
320 Gb Hard Drive
Snow Leopard 10.6.8
Thanks in advance.

So I recently downloaded a program (MCMap Live) to make an image of my Minecraft world.
I ran it the first time and it took up all my RAM like expected, but gave me issues.
So I try to run it again without any other programs besides Finder running and my Mac started puking out this error that my startup disk was almost full and I had to kill some apps or delete files.
I open Finder and it tells me I have over 190gb of free space...
I ignored the warning and after the program was finished and I restarted, my airport card stopped working. So I restart again.
The airport card turns back on, but now I can't run any intensive programs because that error about my startup disk keeps coming back and shutting them down.
Does anyone know what is going on and how to fix it?
MacBook Pro Late 2008
2.53GHz
4G Ram
320 Gb Hard Drive
Snow Leopard 10.6.8
Thanks in advance.

Error message startup disk is full but it isn't

I have emptied trash, and cleared folders, I have only had the notebook a month, so it really cant have the 675,240 files on it! any ideas??

For information about the Other category in the Storage display, see this support article. If the Storage display seems to be inaccurate, try rebuilding the Spotlight index.
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 restart the computer. That will temporarily free up some space.
According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of the data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.
When Time Machine backs up a portable Mac, some of the free space will be used to make local snapshots, which are backup copies of recently deleted files. The space occupied by local snapshots is reported as available by the Finder, and should be considered as such. In the Storage display of System Information, local snapshots are shown as Backups. The snapshots are automatically deleted when they expire or when free space falls below a certain level. You ordinarily don't need to, and should not, delete local snapshots yourself. If you followed bad advice to disable local snapshots by running a shell command, you may have ended up with a lot of data in the Other category. Ask for instructions in that case.
See this support article for some simple ways to free up storage space.
You can more effectively use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) or GrandPerspective (GP) to explore the volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can also delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one. Note that ODS only works with OS X 10.8 or later. If you're running an older OS version, use GP.
Deleting files inside an iPhoto or Aperture library will corrupt the library. Any changes to a photo library must be made from within the application that created it. The same goes for Mail files.
Proceed further only if the problem isn't solved by the above steps.
ODS or GP can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.
Back up all data now.
If you have more than one user account, make sure you're logged in as an administrator. The administrator account is the one that was created automatically when you first set up the computer.
Install the app you downloaded in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.
Triple-click anywhere in the corresponding line of text below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
sudo /Applications/GrandPerspective.app/Contents/MacOS/GrandPerspective
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders, sorted by size. It may take a few minutes for the app to finish scanning.
I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means. When in doubt, leave it alone or ask for guidance.
When you're done with the app, quit it and also quit Terminal.

My disk needs repairs, but I don't have startup disk...

Will upgrading software fix it or should I do something else?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
If you hard drive has to be repaired and you upgrade OS X, things may go wrong, because the upgrade may fail and you will lose all the files. Call Apple to get replacement DVDs > http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57
When you get the DVDs, follow these steps:
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install Disc 1 and hold the C key while your computer is starting.
2. Choose your language, and go to Utilities menu > Disk Utility.
3. Select your OS X volume on the sidebar and repair the disk. If it was repaired successfully, go to  > Restart, and continue using your computer as usual. If it couldn't be repaired, you need a new hard drive.
If you haven't made a backup yet, make it now. All hard drives fail, and yours may be closer

I have 15,686 photos on iPhoto 11 and am now, when uploading latest photos, getting a message saying that my startup disk is full. Is there any way of increasing the capacity of the start up disk?

I have 15,686 photos on iPhoto 11. As I've been uploading the latest photos in the last two days I've been getting a message stating that my start-up disk is nearly full. I had no idea there was a limit. Is there any way of increasing its capacity? I have been shooting in Raw of late and I know it takes up a lot of space but I have heard of other people who have over 20,000 photos on their computers, so what is going on here??

Two possibiilities here:
1. Your start up disk is nearly full
Or
2. You have minor damage to the iPhoto Library and it's giving you a bogus message.
But here's the thing: A full start up disk is a very serious issue and needs to be dealt with fast.
So, how big is your Hard Disk? How much free space on it?
Regards
TD

Startup disk is full but I don't have much on the Mac

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