Supplement to "Full startup disc"

I now see that someone else has already asked the same question. If I understand the replies to the person who asked the question, deleting any files will help. I had thought that "startup disc" implied some special sub-category of files, but I guess I was wrong. Please let me know if the term "startup disc" includes any and all files. If so, deleting anything will help solve my problem.
iMac DV (Special Edition) Mac OS X (10.3.9)

you might be thinking of system files being the special subset. Your startup disk refers only to the disk that the system resides on. And that's just your hard drive.
If your hard drive was partitioned, it would refer only to the partition that contains the system files.
So your solution here is to look for large files that you never use. music and video files are common culprits.

Similar Messages

What can i do about a full startup disc?

what can i do about a full startup disc?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion's 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.

Macbook pro had a full startup disc and crashed

Hi, need help! My macbook pro had a full startup disc and crashed, I have since deleted a lot of files to clear space (23gb+) but now I can only get it to boot up in safe mode. I've run disc utility and the HD is fine also ticked all the login items to disable them (I think) in the Users and Groups. It did reboot normally once after doing this but soon froze up again after 5 or 10 mins. I think it is a 3rd party extension issue but how do I find it?

"Ticking" the login item only hides it. It's still loading. You need to select it then click the - sign. You should probably start there, the other stuff is more involved.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2047747/take-control-of-startup-and-login-items. html

Full startup disc

A warning just appeared on my screen: Your startup disc is almost full. You need to....
How do I access my startup disc, and how to I make more space on it? Incidentally, I only recently had my memory increased from 2 to 4 GB.

Kappy wrote:
Memory has nothing to do with your hard drive. If your hard drive is full then you have a few alternatives:
1. Replace the drive with a larger one.
2. Buy an external drive and move some files to the external drive.
3. Delete any of your files you no longer need.
Your "startup disc" is your hard drive - the drive icon that's on your Desktop.
That is a shock. It seems that I was better off with my old iMac. I never had any spinning balls with it, and I never received any message saying that my startup disc was getting filled. So the money I spent on the increased money was wasted. I would have been much better off if I had just had my old set fixed, but silly me thought that a newer model with much more memory and two Intel processors would put my old set in the shade. Well, my old set was superior in very way that counts. Well, I guess I'll just follow my thoughts and get the old thing fixed. Thanks for the information, though.

Full startup disc, applications freezing and closing down

Hi,
My computer is freezing and closing applications down. It says my startup disk is full. My HD has 120GB and 113GB of it are used. But my iPhotos and iTunes only take up approx 40GB. Where is the rest of the space?? Help topics recommended to check Consol messages; I have 3,524 but have no idea what they mean or what to do about them. For example, the latest is
06/10/2013 23:15:34
Finder[144]
pearlBrowserSelectionChanged.
Can anyone help please? Many thx in advance!

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.

What do I need to do when I receive the message ". . . your startup disc is full, you need to make some room by deleting some files"

I hope I'm in the right place since I was sort of redirected here Recently I have been receiving the message that my startup disc is full and that I need to make room by deleting files. At first I received the message when I left my computer unattended with my virtual machine on, using VMWare Fusion to run Windows. Recently though, I got the message when I left my computer unattended for about 6 hours without the virtual machine running. As an aside, I get extremely nervous when anything freezes VMWare because it is usually a nightmare to get back into Windows if I can at all without calling Tech Support. This new message however, appeared without the virtual machine active, so I was relieved that VMWare most likely was not the cause. After reading a number of Tech Support articles and Community discussion questions and answers, I started wondering if iTunes or the SMC firmware or a combination thereof may be causing the problems. Mind you I know nothing about the SMC stuff because as I said, I am really new to Mac and know very little about computer code or processors or any of that stuff. But I do know that iTunes has recently been giving me some trouble, such as opening on start up and I can't figure out why and messing around with my iTunes libraries. I also read about the SMC firmware and the computer's sleep cycle so that sort of made sense. But I seriously need advice from someone a lot smarter than me. So, before you ask, both iTunes and my SMC firmware are up to date. I'm running a mid-2007 iMac Intel Core 2 Duo Processor with 2.4 GHz of speed.
You may not need all this junk, but in case you do, since the message tells me to make room and delete files, here goes. Now, if I need to make space and delete files, this is where I get confused and it's probably very simple but I'm still a relatively new Mac user and I still can't seem to find all the info about my Mac! I'm not exactly sure how much space I have left on my hard drive. I had to replace my hard drive last December and the invoice says it is a 500 GB 7200 SATA hard drive. For some reason I thought I had more than that. Regardless, System Profiler shows 10.26 GB currently available, 499.76 used; I assume that the used portion includes my partitioned drive that has my virtual machine on it? I may be using the wrong language when calling it that but that's how I understand it as a "partitioned drive". Now, when looking at the System Profiler, under Volumes, Capacity 209 MB writable diskOs1 - I think this my Virtual Machine. I also have three Western Digital drives that I use for Time Machine and for pictures and music; however, as I said, I am still new with Macs and do not fully understand the file structure so there may be pictures on my Mac hard drive that are duplicated on 1 or more of my WD drives but I don't know how to find them or if I do, I'm afraid to delete them. Of these WD external drives, 1 is 500 GB and is full with Time Machine backups; the 2nd WD drive is 3 TB and has 2.18 TB available and is currently being used for Time Machine backups; the final WD drive is 1 TB Firewire and currently has 694.33 GB available.
Any help would be appreciated. Please forgive any inaccurate terms or mis-statements of terminology as I do not really know what I'm talking about as far as the pieces and parts of the operating system; I'm just trying my best to describe what I see.
One more piece of advice that I would appreciate would be recommendations about a good file cleaner, for duplicates, messy file structure, space utilization software; it also needs to be idiot proof software. I have a trial version of Appdelete that I never really used and I have the purchased version of Tune Up My Mac that I haven't spent much time with because I'm afraid I'll delete something I shouldn't
Thank you for your help
Memalyn

Hi Memalyn
Essentially, the bare issue is that you have a 500GB hard drive with only 10GB free. That is not sufficient to run the system properly. The two options you have are to move/remove files to another location, or to install a larger hard drive (eg 2TB). Drive space has nothing to do with SMC firmware, and usually large media files are to blame.
My first recommendation is this: download and run the free OmniDiskSweeper. This will identify the exact size of all your folders - you can drill down into the subfolders and figure out where your largest culprits are. For example, you might find that your Pictures folder contains both an iPhoto Library and copies that you've brought in from a camera but are outside the iPhoto Library structure. Or perhaps you have a lot of purchased video content in iTunes.
If you find files that you KNOW you do not need, you can delete them. Don't delete them just because you have a backup, since if the backup fails, you will lose all your copies.
Don't worry about "cleaners" for now - they don't save much space and can actually cause problems. Deal with the large file situation first and see how you get on.
Let us know what you find out, and if you manage to get your space back.
Matt

After upgrading to mountain lion i keep getting an error message saying my startup disc is full. it shouldnt be full because there is barely anything on there and i was running windows with bootcamp prior to this with no issues

after upgrading to mountain lion i keep getting an error message saying my startup disc is full. it shouldnt be full because there is barely anything on there and i was running windows with bootcamp prior to this with no issues. my computer now freezes and programs close randomly. The usual command for opening windows with bootcamp doesnt work. once in restarted my computer after it froze and it rebooted in windows automatically. i really just want to know if there is a way to take the upgrade off my laptop because it is very annoying.

Hi Memalyn
Essentially, the bare issue is that you have a 500GB hard drive with only 10GB free. That is not sufficient to run the system properly. The two options you have are to move/remove files to another location, or to install a larger hard drive (eg 2TB). Drive space has nothing to do with SMC firmware, and usually large media files are to blame.
My first recommendation is this: download and run the free OmniDiskSweeper. This will identify the exact size of all your folders - you can drill down into the subfolders and figure out where your largest culprits are. For example, you might find that your Pictures folder contains both an iPhoto Library and copies that you've brought in from a camera but are outside the iPhoto Library structure. Or perhaps you have a lot of purchased video content in iTunes.
If you find files that you KNOW you do not need, you can delete them. Don't delete them just because you have a backup, since if the backup fails, you will lose all your copies.
Don't worry about "cleaners" for now - they don't save much space and can actually cause problems. Deal with the large file situation first and see how you get on.
Let us know what you find out, and if you manage to get your space back.
Matt

My startup disc is full and I want to find out the size of trash and junk in mailbox before dumping trash & junk

I have gotten this message saying that my startup disc is full.
I know I need to dump the trash can on my home screen and I have done that.
I know that there is both trash and junk in my mail app that I will dump also but I am curious as to the size of the trash and junk in mail but I don’t see how to find the sizes.
Its nice that the Junk tells me that there are 739 messages but it doesn’t say what the size of all of them is.
Do you know how i can see what the file sizes are for trash and Junk in Mail?
I know I can just delete them and see how much this yellow bar decreases but that seems like a crude way to see what the file sizes are that I have deleted.
If you have an answer for how to find out the file sizes of the Mail trash and junk I would like to know how to do it.
I have the latest version 10.9.4 on my Mac Air.

do you have the Size Column selected in the View pulldown?

My HD is almost full. I need to add space. Can I use an external HD to continue using my startup disc as it is?

My HD is almost full. I need to add space. Can I use an external HD to continue using my startup disc as it is?
I create music and have run out of space. the message says 'your startup disc is almost full', and i just thought maybe buying an external hard drive and using it as the startup disc or whatever would do the trick. Does anyone know? Thanks!

External hard drives are relatively inexpensive...see some of those on OWC, www.macsales.com
You can use a large external drive to provide additional space by simply saving material to that volume instead of the startup disk. You can also partition the external drive to use part for Time Machine backups, and another partition for extended space. Or a third partition for a clone of the boot system made by Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, both free downloads, so should the internal drive have problems you could always boot from the external partition.
All of that can be done from Disk Utility.
Keep in mind that Mac OS X gets very unhappy when there is less than 15% of the startup disk space free.

My startup disc full i tried to clean it but i could not also i could not empty my trash

i have problem with my startup disk
i wanted to install some softwear but always i got a massege says ypur startup disc is full delete some content from it i tried to delete some app but still its full
so i check my trash i fined it full with 21 GB i tried to delete it but also i couldnot
so now i dont know how to solve this issue

Make sure that you don't have many login items.
If that trash won't empty, you can do a secure empty but with 21 GB of items it will probably take a long time. Unless you really need something you should probably just erase and reinstall.

In attempting to install recommended software updates I get a message saying my startup disc is full. I have an Intel-based desktop with 1GB memory. What can I safely remove?

In attempting to install recommended software updates I get a message that my startup disc is full. I have an iMac (intel-based) with 1GB memory. I suspect my iTunes library is using up much of the space (I have no movies installed and have already copied most of my photos to a DVD to free up space). If I follow the instructions to move my iTunes library to an external HD (can I use a flash drive?) will I have enough working memory to plug it back in for use when I want to access the library?

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Moving libraries off the boot disk while doable is not very viable. It creates many new problems in backing up your data, as now you have more than one source to backup. See my backup FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
My suggestion is to get at least two copies of all your essential data in one manner or another, and get a larger boot hard drive to replace what you currently use to be able to consolidate your libraries.
As for cleaning space, see my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html

Keep getting a popup window stating" startup disc almost full, need to delete files"

keep getting a popup window stating" startup disc almost full, need to delete files", what can i do to help with this, i generally have only photos in iphoto, some imovies, and a small amount of documents

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.
Look through your other Mailboxes and other Mail categories to see If there is other mail you can archive and/or delete.
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!

Startup disc full message

I have an iMac G3 running OS10.3, and this last week I have been getting messages that my startup disc is full. I have taken everything off I can, emptied the cache and all trash. The best I can get is 25.2 MB free space, and that will only last for a few hours. How do I get to the startup disc so that I can clean it?
Thanks for suggestions.

jltski:
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Unfortunately you do not tell us what model iMac G3 you have, nor the size of your HDD.
The rule of thumb for free space is that you should have at least 15% of disk capacity free. This allows the computer to function efficiently and avoids directory problems, crashes and consequent loss of data.
You have three basic options:
1. You can free as much space as you can. In the article linked by little shoulders there is reference to the utility What Size, which scans your disk and lists what you have on your HDD by size. However, even if you remove a lot of stuff you will end up where you now are before long.
2. A second option is to purchase and use an external Firewire HDD. These come in very large sizes and generally have speeds up to 7200 rpms. You could partition it and use it for your HDD, as well as for other stuff. However, it has the drawback of not being as portable, which, with a desktop computer should not be a problem.
3. The best solution is to purchase and install a new internal HDD. These, too, are available in fairly large sizes and are relatively inexpensive. If you get a 100 or 200 GB HDD it will be a while before you run out of space. You will need a 3.5" IDE/ATA drive, and you can very likely install it yourself. Here is a list of drives from OWC. The Seagate drives are highly recommended and come with a 5 year warranty.
Please do not hesitate to post back with further questions or comments.
Good luck.
cornelius
Message was edited by: cornelius

My start up disc is full i have a macbook air, i back everuthing up with time capsule and have movies all my music libraries and photos onto that too so as i have free space, but my max still says my startup disc is full with "other"

my start up disc is full i have a macbook air, i back everuthing up with time capsule and have movies all my music libraries and photos onto that too so as i have free space, but my max still says my startup disc is full with "other"

First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. 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 available 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 as described here. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.
You can also use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can 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.
Proceed further only if the problem hasn't been solved.
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.
Triple-click the line of text below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (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.
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 you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.

My macbook pro will not startup, startup disc is full

my macbook pro will not startup, startup disc is full

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.
If you are no longer able to boot your computer, then the drive is too full and has become corrupted. You may be able to repair it using Disk Utility on your Installer DVD:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Tiger Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. 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 click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
If this doesn't work, then you will have to erase the drive and install OS X from scratch. From the Tiger installer disc you will choose the Erase and Install install option.

Supplement to "Full startup disc"

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