Trying to Free Space on Mac Pro HD

I know there is a lot of info on this subject, but I don't want to download any programs to do this for me because that's exactly what I'm trying to stay away from. I really don't want to put one more thing on my drive until I can learn how to more thoroughly investigate what's already on it.
I know that my drive is close to full because I've gotten the message twice tonight. What I don't know is how to figure out what's taking up all the space. When I go to about this mac and look under storage it shows that the majority of my space is being filled by "other".
Does anyone have any advice?
Thank you!
Trey

You could and in fact should use that external storage for your files (and backups!). Most heavy users keep their iTunes and iPhoto libraries on external drives.
Moving your documents, etc, is as easy as copying them to the new location and deleting the originals (after confirming they copied without issues). You should probably set up a filing system that will work well for your needs.
Moving iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, Aperture and the like, is more complicated as the applications need to "know" where all the files, libraries and databases are located. You should first learn about each app and how to move its files before doing anything.
Good luck.

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How to free up space on Mac Pro "other" Storage Category

Shows 25.73GB free out of 150.18GB -- with 98GB in unknown "other" category. How do I locate those files and access them to try to clear up more space?
Mac Pro 13, 10.9.5 IOS, 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Memor 8GB 1067 MHz DDR3, 8GB memory installed.

If you are running Yosemite then this is a bug. If you need to know this information then select the Desktop icon for your drive. Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. The information is displayed in the top panel as: Capacity, Available, and Used.
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.

Despite large free space, my McBook pro is slow response. How can I do?

Despite large free space, my McBook pro is slow response. How can I do?

this user tip may be helpful in diagnosing your problem
I don't usually like recommending that particular guy's user tips. He has some very strange ideas, and they creep into his user tips. Some have some very questionable advice.
Try my Mac Performance Guide, the XLab's FAQ or the Mac OS X Speed FAQ instead.

Im trying to free space on my iphone 4 8gb by deleting photos, if i put them onto my icloud can i delete the photo stream but still have the photos

im trying to free space on my iphone 4 8gb by deleting photos, if i put them onto my icloud can i delete the photo stream but still have the photos

There's no way to delete all message threads at one go. You can however do one contact thread at a time.
In Messages app where you see a list of messages from different contacts, tap Edit (top left), tap the red (on the left), then tap the red Delete button on the right.

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Hi all,
I'm trying to install Mavericks on Mac Pro series 4,1 After downloading from App Store, when computer restarts I get grey screen with the "no entry" sign. I have checked compatibility and this model qualifies for Mavericks. Tried a clean install of 10.6.8 first, but no luck. Any ideas?
The Mac has single quad core 2.66, 6 Gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT120 graphics. Four hard drives. Three Pro Tools HD cards in PCIe slots.
I also tried this with Mountain Lion, with the same results.

Didn't have any luck with removing PCI cards, BUT................ here's how I resolved the issue:
I tried making a USB stick installer. That also failed, but I noticed it couldn't find any hard drives.
I did a search about OSX installer not finding drives and found someone who had that issue and it turned out to be a conflict with the WIFI card (Atheros, not the more common Broadcom)
I checked my System Profiler and sure enough, I have the Atheros.
I just removed the WIFI card and booted into OSX Installer (it was still there after the failed install) and successfully installed Mavericks.

Has anyone tried Kensington RAM in their Mac Pro?

Has anyone tried Kensington RAM in their Mac Pro? I found this ram and that is far cheaper than OWC or apple.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139940
Please let me know what your experience has been with 3rd party ram.
Lester

NewEgg: " Memory returns allowed for 30 days, subject to 15 percent re-stocking fee. "
So YOU are the expert about which are the correct modules. a mistake costs you 15 percent plus shipping.
I prefer to do business with mac-centric vendor who lend me their expertise and tell me what memories work in my Mac, "Guaranteed or your money back."
OWC is one that does business that way.
Data Memory Systems does as well, and that is the outfit I use.
The last 1333 8GB module like these I bought from them came with a large flat heatsink installed. I put it in my Server. The price has fallen a bit since then, and now they are asking US$78, but "Guaranteed."
http://www.datamemorysystems.com/_apple_info/Apple_Mac_Pro_12-Core_Xeon_Westmere _2.93GHz_Memory_1632.asp

USB- Free space for Mac

Im going to be buying a mini 32gb usb that i can stick into my macbook air 24/7 without a problem and use it as "free space" for my mac but does that really mean that my mac will use it as actual space because my mac only has 64gb so im looking for extra storage. So basically how should i partition my usb in a way that my mac actually uses it as storage space so i dont get low on space and run the risk of my mac running slow?
Thanks!

Bart1977
What I like about the solution of the mini-USB sticks, is that you never forget to bring them along. They just stay put.
Thats what they dont do, USB sticks are the "most lost computer item" on earth. AND if you plan on putting private/ personal data on them and lose them,....then a crook finds it,........
A superslim 1tb drive now is only 9.5mm thick (with 7mm about to come out),...realistically such a drive takes up not a lot more space in any laptop bag and they weigh extremely little.
As to the SSD upgrade, cost is too high, and it supposes one is using the Air outside its idealized use as a working platform,....meaning use only all APPS, and all vital data you need on a weekly basis, and dont use the SSD for storing any level of media files (pics, vids, music), .....as people are often found doing, trying to use a 128gig / 256gig SSD as a "storage device for their vids/ music/ pic collections" etc, and soon finding out there is no space left.

How do I erase the free space on macbook pro retina?

I went to erase the free space on my MacBook Pro Retina in the Disk Utility but it says not available for this type of drive. Is there a way I can get around this?

You can't use Disk Utility to securely erase a Solid State Disk drive, because of the fact that SSD's have limited write capability, unlike hard drives, thus have to protect the sectors from as little writes as possible.
In fact TRIM (wear leveling) is enabled to write new data to the least used sectors on a SSD each time.
The NSA guidelines for secure data destruction on SSD's is to grind them into a fine powder.
If you don't require this level of data destruction, you can do this trick below, but not often or you'll premaurely wear out your SSD.
Finder > Duplicate a small file repeatly in a folder until slightly more than 50% of the remaining free space on the SSD is used up, (use Activity Monitor) then delete this folder.
Then duplicate a different small file repeatly in another folder in the same manner.
What this will do is, because of the small file, OS X will fill the smallest unused spots on the SSD, the duplicates will fill the remaining free space half way, then the second folder will (because of TRIM) fill the other remaining 50% of the free space.
You can't fill your boot drive or the machine can refuse to function or boot, but because of the wear leveling this should overwrite all your available free space on the SSD once.
If you have a laptop and TimeMachine, there is a hidden database on the boot drive which will store a copy of the deleted data.
Then there is "versions" and it's possible a copy of the deleted data is stored in that cache file still on the SSD.
I can advise how to delete the TimeMachine backup file on the boot drive, but not the "versions" database or what it contains.
How do I securely delete data from the machine?
If your really paranoid it's likely best to reformat the entire MacintoshHD partition from recovery and then with a new user, then do the Finder > Duplicate procedure to overwrite the deleted data off the SSD, this way the "versions" and TimeMachine databases are also overwritten.
Nothing is safe anymore.

HT6114 how to free space on mac

Please help

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 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. Reboot and it should go away.
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 (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.

Since I tried the free trial adobe XI pro

Since I tried the free Adobe XI pro version, I elected not to purchase and now I can't open any adobe products, what do I need to do to fix this?

Pat,
I HAVE WINDOWS 8, YES I HAVE UNINSTALLED IT, THAT DIDN’T HELP. Error message when attempting to open PDF files; Adobe reader could not open – ‘96463_plans_0063^a2_08_plans_building.jpg’ because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn’t correctly decoded). For one, this file was never a jpg file nor was it ever sent as an email and it worked just fine until the program expired and the message would come up that I needed to purchase the program to continue opening item’s that I could open prior to trying the free trial. I deleted the free trial and now I get the message that it is a corrupted file. Not all pdf files that I have are affected, it appears only the ones that I opened while trying the free trail. Nor does it affect new pdf files, we are a business and the computers are connected through a peer to peer network and I can view them on another computer. I believe the when the free trial ended the program left so sort of marker (maybe the jpg) on these files on my computer that does not allow me to open my files from my computer. On the screen the appear to be pdf files, on other computers they are pdf files, but the program on exit put a jpg designation on them and now I can’t open them even as a picture (jpg) file as it comes up as a corrupted file. Is this salvageable or am I just screwed as to recovering my files?
[private data removed]

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Just made the switch to Mac. Purchased my Mac Pro yesterday, loaded .Mac, and plugged in my iPhone to the computer. Followed the steps to Sync iCal and contacts from iPhone and although it is registering there is a phone and downloading photos, it is not syncing anything else.
The steps I took were System Preferences, .mac, and checked the relevant boxes. It indicates syncing is taking place but the calendar on iPhone and Mac Pro are not syncing.
Could anyone help with advice? SHould I be able to sync easily between the iPhone and the Mac Pro with .mac?

You use iTunes to sync an iPhone - not *.Mac Sync* or iSync.
*.Mac Sync* is for syncing between Macs, and iSync is for syncing third-party mobile phones and PDAs.
The iPhone specific forums are here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=201

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I just installed a Western Digital My Book Studio 1tb external hard drive to use with my Mac. I am using it with Time Machine, not the software it came with.
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iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD

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Know any review sites that will review the printers Apple is offering free with Powerbook Pro purchases this month? Or can anyone recommend a good, reliable one, esp for photos? Tks

I choose my printers based on:
1) Will I be able to afford the ink? Generally this means that third-party, after-market cartridges must be available for this printer. I check to see if that is so by going to supermediastore dot com and 123inkjets dot com.
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