Used disk space on new MacBook: mystery!

We've just (about 3 weeks ago) bought a new MacBook for my wife to use. I'm completely mystified about the amount of disk space that is already used, and wondered if there is some problem. Here are the figures, from Disk Utility:
Total Capacity of Toshiba disk: 55.9GB
Macintosh HD capacity: 55.6GB
Available space: 36.2GB
Used: 19.4GB
I thought this looked like a lot of space already used, given that my we'd loaded on a modest amount of files from her old PC, almost all Word documents, very little pics, music etc. So I looked at how much space was being used by her home folder, the Applications folder and a couple of others:
Home folder: 1.88GB
Applications: 4.34GB
Music: 11.2MB
Pictures: 1.8MB
So, the total that we can account is not much over 6GB. What is using the other 13GB? Surely this can't be right?
Ian Wellens
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Use whatsize to see what all is there.
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/
Language files alone take up a couple of gig, garage band over 3 gig. With the OSX and all the extras that come with it it takes up around 16 gig.
With a clean install and getting rid of everything I didn't use or need I got it to less than 5 gig.
Mort

Similar Messages

Music is on an external hard drive how to transfer to iPod without using disk space on MacBook

Hi
I just brought a new iPod as my last one broke and I was wondering if there was a way to transfer my music currently stored on an external hard drive on to the iPod without having to have it using up disk space on my MacBook.
I was told in the Apple store by a sale guy that you can do this by creating a playlist in iTunes and dragging the music files in from the hard drive. He said it wouldn't be stored on the MacBook and the playlist could only be accessed (or music played on the macbook) when the hard drive was connected. But when we tried this it started transferring ALL of the music from the hard drive onto the main iTunes library and subsequently onto the disk space on the MacBook.
Can someone help me :-)

The sales guy does not know what he's talking about...
Open iTunes preferences Advanced tab. Uncheck the box for Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library. Click OK.
Now, when you add those songs to your iTunes library, iTunes will access the song files from the external drive, where they are currently located. And you can sync them to your iPod.

How can i clean up my disk space on my MacBook Pro

how can i clean up my disk space on my MacBook Pro something like a disk cleanup on a pc?

Those things you did on your PC you need not worry about on your Mac. Most is done behind the scenes.
Kappy's Personal Suggestions About OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. Drive Genius provides additional tools not found in Disk Warrior. Versions 1.5.1 and later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.)
If you are using a pre-Leopard version of OS X, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced since Tiger. (These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion and should not be installed.)
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems. For more about malware see Macintosh Virus Guide.
I would also recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX 2.4.3, or Cocktail 5.1.1 that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. (There is no confirmation that this version also works with Lion or later.)
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Data Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. SyncTwoFolders
6. Synk Pro
7. Synk Standard
8. Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Always have a current backup before performing any system updates or upgrades.
Additional suggestions will be found in:
      1. Mac Maintenance Quick Assist,
      2. Mac OS X speed FAQ,
      3. Speeding up Macs,
      4. Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance,
      5. Essential Mac Maintenance: Get set up,
      6. Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines,
      7. Maintaining OS X,
      8. Five Mac maintenance myths,
      9. How to Speed up Macs, and
    10. Myths of required versus not required maintenance for Mac OS X.
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.
Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity or 20 GBs, whichever is greater, as free space.

Installing Photoshop CS4 from original Disk onto my new Macbook Pro. Serial number accepted but now asks for the serial number of a previous version e.g. CS3 which I no longer keep. How do I resolve ?

Installing Photoshop CS4 from original Disk onto my new Macbook Pro. Serial number accepted but now asks for the serial number of a previous version e.g. CS3 which I no longer keep. How do I resolve ?

Tina Hadley did you migrate/transfer your applications over to your new Macintosh? If so this could cause problems with your serial number being recognized. Please run the available uninstallers located in Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers folder. Once this is done you will also want to run the CC Cleaner Tool. Details on the use of the CC Cleaner Tool can be found at Use the CC Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems | CC, CS3-CS6 - http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/cs5-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html.

HT201364 what is the best way to open up disk space on my macbook pro

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO FREE DISK SPACE ON MY MACBOOK PRO, I NEED SPACE TO DOWNLOAD YOSEMITE

OmniDiskSweeper (free download)
<http://www.omnigroup.com/more>
<http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7402/omnidisksweeper>
DO NOT delete files in your Home Folder -> Library tree as there are things like your iPhone backups, your email messages, your application preferences, etc...
DO NOT delete files outside your home folder, as you may end up deleting something essential to Mac OS X, and turn your Mac into an expensive “Door Stop”.
I will point out that you will find some very large files in private -> var -> vm (these are the Mac OS X virtual memory paging files (swapfiles) and where Mac OS X stores the copy of RAM when your Mac is put to sleep). The swapfiles get deleted on reboot, and the sleep image is just going to be created again when you put your Mac to sleep.
If you think you have found something to delete outside your home folder, it would be best to ask first before deleting. There are many examples of people deleting files outside their home folder, or renaming files, or changing the ownership or permissions of files, and then their Mac stops running. Do not be one of those people. Ask first.
PS. Please do not use ALL CAPS for your entire messages. In the world of text messages, forums, etc... ALL CAPS is shouting, and we haven't done anything that annoying yet

I need more hard disk space on my macbook pro

I need more hard disk space on my macbook pro

Since you have 160 GB listed as backups let's assume these are Time Machine snapshots. Time Machine will use up to 80% of the disk space for local snapshots. This is not an issue. As you fill your disk it willl remove snapshots to maintain at least 20% free. If you wish to free this space simply plug in a Time Machine backup disk and run a backup.
You might also notice that the Storage display in About This Mac will show the backup space as used while a Get Info on the sytem drive will show that space free. So at this point, if it is Time Machine snapshots that are taking the space, you should see 160 GB more free space from the Get Info query compared to the Storage display.
Summary: If this space is Time Machine snapshots then don't worry about it. It will take care of itself.
I do not recommend leaving Time Machine in the off state. It is a valuable backup tool that can save your bacon when you accidentally delete or modify a file or if your system crashes. The snapshots are backups at recent times that you can go back to should you delete or currupt a file, even if you do not have a Time Machine disk plugged in.
Time Machine FAQ, What are Local Snapshots: http://pondini.org/TM/30.html

How do i save a copy of my emails on the server on a macook pro? I am having a problem when using hotmail on my new macbook, they say it is set pop3? i have not idea what this means!

I am not very good on computers and need help, I have lost past history emails when i have used hotmail on my new macbook, they say it is not set right but i do not understand! they say I need to ensure the box 'save a copy to the server' is ticked but they can not help me locate this and I have no idea what to do, can anyone talk me through this please?

Check your mail preferences. The example below is from the mail app that comes with mac. In my case I'm using yahoo mail which is a POP3 account. POP stands for post office protocol which is the set of rules used by a POP mail account to transfer mail. You can learn more about it here if interested. If the box below is checked, all the mail will be downloaded to your computer when you check your mail using the built in mail app and removed from the mail server. Here is another page to help you set up your hotmail account for use the the mac mail application. Hope this clears things up.

I have Lightroom 4 on disc which is installed on my Mac desktop. I want to use it on a new MacBook with no disc drive. Can I install it by download using the serial number? How?

I have Lightroom 4 on disc which is installed on my Mac desktop. I want to use it on a new MacBook with no disc drive. Can I install it by download using the serial number? If so< how?

1. Go to the following website and download the last version of Lightroom 4:Adobe - Lightroom : For Macintosh : Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.4.1
2. Run the installation package to install Lightroom.
3. Use your existing serial number to activate the program.

What plug adapter do I use to connect the new Macbook USB-C port to a cinema display?

What plug adapter do I use to connect the new Macbook USB-C port to a cinema display?

If you intend to connect your 2008 display to the new macbook then you will need a USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter ($79) as well as a mini display port to VGA port adapter ($29) and also a VGA-VGA Standard 15-Pin VGA Male to VGA Male Cable ($5).
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MJ1L2AM/A/usb-c-vga-multiport-adapter
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB572Z/B/mini-displayport-to-vga-adapter
http://www.amazon.com/VGA-VGA-Standard-15-Pin-Male-Cable/dp/B0002AHT0M
The 2008 old cinema analogue Apple Cinema Displays were mostly pre-quipped with a mini display port rather than a VGA or HDMI port. So you will have to connect the mini display port to VGA port adapter to your 2008 ACD and the USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter to your new macbook and connect the two female VGA ports with a VGA-VGA Standard 15-Pin VGA Male to VGA Male Cable.
But I can't guarantee though that the above setup will work for your new macbook and your 2008 Apple Cinema Display. You should double check with Apple support regarding my suggestion. Just let me know.......

I cannot use Quicken on my new MacBook Air (Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2) Any suggestions? I love Quicken and it takes care of all my financial needs.

I cannot use Quicken on my new MacBook Air (Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2) Any suggestions? I love Quicken and it takes care of all my financial needs.

You can wait for Quicken to update (supposedly in the works) or you can switch to another application such as Quicken Essentials or another application of which there are several you will find at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
Otherwise you'll need to return your MBA and buy a slightly older model Mac that still runs Snow Leopard. Lion will not run any PPC-only applications such as Qucken or MS Office 2004.

How do I run Disk Warrior on new MacBook Pros?

I am trying to help my good friend who purchased a Late-2012 Macbook Pro 13-inch Core i5 2.5 GHz. It runs 10.8 ML. WIth reckless technical abandon, she swamped and corrupted her HD directory with repeated massive transfers of large-size photo files in and out of her laptop when the drive was already probably at least 95% full to capacity. She probably experienced repeated Out-of-Memory notifications as she would try to perform these ops while Photoshop was using almost all available free space on the same disk as Scratch Storage for its operations.
Suddenly she could not boot her MBP. She called Apple warranty support, and they convinced her the only thing she could do was to wipe the HD and reinstall the OS. Angry as **** about losing about 3 weeks of critical photo images since her last backup, she dutifully obeyed. She said the wipe operation took only a part of a minute.
So, with that background, I told her I felt the wipe was not a low-level erase at all, but just the most minimal erase procedure possible, and that I thought many of her old files may be recoverable with a tool like DiskWarrior if she did it immediately, before starting to reinstall applications and other content back onto the disk.Can anyone back me up on this?
Now, on to how I can try to do the recovery. She has considered sending the drive out to a "clean room" recovery service, but before doing so at great cost, I wanted to at least try a DiskWarrior directory repair. With no optical drive, she cannot boot from the Disk Warrior 7.X DVD, or create a bootable CD or DVD to run Disc Warrior for the same reason. How else can we force the MBP to allow the hard drive to be read by DiskWarrior? Can I load DW on a FireWire drive and use Thunderbolt-to-FW adapter on MBP to boot from it? Disk Warrior's website still says "The current DiskWarrior DVD cannot start up the new MacBook Pros introduced June 11, 2012. An updated disc that will also start up these recent Mac models will be released as soon as Apple, Inc. releases new startup files to Alsoft, Inc. and other developers." Do I still have to wait for something from Apple? Or can I put the MBP in Target Mode and run DW connected via FireWire (and Thunderbolt adapter) from my own MacBook running OSX Lion? And hopefully repair her directory? Is there hope here?

You'll need to install Windows on your Macbook. This can be done by either using Boot Camp (free, from Apple) or Parallels Desktop for Mac (free trial, $80 retail). Either approach requires that you own an additional copy of Windows (Windows XP sp2 for Boot Camp) which you will then install on your Mac.
In brief, Boot Camp sets up your Mac so you can boot into either OS X or Windows (but not have both running at the same time; you switch via a reboot), and Parallels creates a virtual machine in which you will run Windows while OS X is running. You're correct that you can't run Virtual PC on your Intel-based Mac. Parallels will give you that functionality on your Mac (and be a lot faster than Virtual PC in the process).
You might want to start with Parallels' free trial and see if that meets your needs for these CDs. Parallels doesn't require that you make changes to your partitions on your drive; it just installs an application and creates a virtual disk which to OS X is just another file (albeit a large one), and you don't need to reboot to switch back and forth between Windows and OS X. If it works, you're set.
If you have graphics adapter-intensive Windows applications (e.g., games or something that requires 3D acceleration), you'll be better off with Boot Camp, because the current version of Parallels does not support DirectX or 3D hardware acceleration.
Hopefully that will get you started. There's other info in the Discussions comparing Parallels to Boot Camp, but feel free to ask if you have questions.
Intel Mini 1.66 GHz, Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Vista and XP running under Parallels

Cannot back up to time capsule using time machine on new MacBook

Have a time capsule that was seamlessly backing up my previous MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard. Recently got a new MacBook Pro running Yosemite. After a horrendous file migration using migration assistant from my Time Machine backup (non Apple programs were crashing after migration), I erased the MacBook hard drive, reinstalled Yosemite, installed non Apple apps from original disks and transferred files from my old Mac manually (drag and drop). Now everything works well on the new MacBook except for back ups via Time Machine to my Time Capsule. Airport Utility can find the Time Capsule and Time Machine starts a back up but it stops and produces an error that ends in ".sparsbundle" could not be accessed (error null)"

Hmmm that is one of our old errors.
Haven't seen that one for a while which suggests one of you apps might be a problem.
Look at C17 in particular here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Although the error codes have changed the basic reason for the error can be the same.
It can also just be a network error.
It is most important if you want to preserve the old backup.. that you make sure you still have enough space. and the new computer has a completely different share name to the old one.
Look at the reference and it has some info about names.. these are vital to get Yosemite to work properly as Apple have changed default protocols between SL and Yosemite.
I would even go further and say.
1. Factory reset the TC.
2. Redo the setup via yosemite version airport utility.. but do not use the apple recommended names.. use extremely short names, no spaces and pure alphanumeric.
3. Use only WPA2 Personal security with pure alphanumeric mixed case and number password.
Tell me if you still have issues as there is some other stuff that might help.
What gen is the TC?
What firmware is it running?

Disk space usage on MacBook Air 256 GB

I have a MacBook Air 256 GB version (summer 2011). I only have abot 15 GB stored under my personal data and about 30 GB on a partition for Fusion under which Windows 7 is installed. Other major applications are MS Office 2011, nothing else much, other than what came with the laptop. I've cleaned the browser cache.
However the system information shows only 10 GB free on the Serial ATA; where do I find the files that are clogging up the disc? With files mentioned as above, I would expect at least 150 GB to be free.
Thanks!

I'm still betting on the Time Machine backups being the issue. Apple sometimes "adjusts" reported free space to try and remove this space, though I've seen it get (temporarily) fouled up about this number. So, for instance, Finder does not count such space as used, but Disk Utility will show it as used.
Those backups are written to "/.MobileBackups" which (kind of) shows up as the "MobileBackups" drive you will see from time to time. Although items are written out to it and some deletion compression takes place, like your external Time Machine the general rule is that this thing will continue to grow until it (eventually) fills all available space. That is by design.
The MobileBackups disk you see in OmniDiskSweeper is the mounted version, and it doesn't appear you will get useful information if you "size" that volume. However I believe you can get the "real" size of the MobileBackups from a couple of places.
Officially, About This Mac->More Information and then Storage will tell you about the backups on your flash drive. That's *usually* correct, though I've seen it get lost on the machine I'm writing this on. I suspect that's because the machine had been set up using Migration Assistance from a MacBook Pro that had been running Lion for a while and some of that information may have "tainted" the starting point. Now the system appears to have finally figured out the real space used :-) .
I'm not sure it's more reliable (since now everything appears to work fine), but you might also get some information if .MobileBackups is involved by running the command in Terminal to show the size of that directly (Finder won't show because only root has permission to look at it).
I first fired up Terminal to get a command prompt. From that prompt I entered the following:
sudo du -sk /.MobileBackups
You will be asked for your password to authorize the command, but by the Terminal (not the standard OSX dialog).
When it ran (took a short time) it output the following:
2728912
/.MobileBackups
Which basically agrees with the 2.8GB of backups that About This Mac's More Information screen comes up with now. And which Finder totally ignores and treats as not used.
If your drive has as much free space as you expect it should have and either you've had the machine for a while, or you've downloaded and deleted a buch of videos in a directory that's not excluded from Time Machine's backup routines, I could see those "there but not really" files (at least as OSX seems to view them) easily growing to be a pretty good size. As I noted, if this is the problem OSX will kick parts of that backup off the drive as more space is needed--it's holding them there "just in case" you might want to restore them.
Have you actually had OSX complain about not having enough free space on the boot drive?
What I have found with Lion is that trying to reconcile various utilities views of free drive space can quickly drive you crazy :-) . The cause always seem to involve accounting for that mobile version of Time Machine backups.

How do I free up disk space on my MacBook Air

Hi,
I have a MacBook Air with a 128GB disk. I recently noticed that I seemed to be using up 74% of the disk capacity so thought I would try and remove some old video files from iTunes. When deleting the files I was prompted to remove the files from the file system which I did. I then empted the trash. But that seems to have very little impact on the disk space used. Considering I must have deleted about 20-30GB of files I would have expected the disk usage to come down a fair bit (I have a 128GB SSD).
Any idea how I can get my disk usage back down?
Thanks
Andy

Have a look at these Links...
Where did my Disk Space go?
what-to-do-when-your-hard-drive-is-full.html
And Here > The Storage Display

FileVaulted data from Powerbook [10.3.x] disk to a new MacBook Pro [10.5.x]

Hi!
My powerbook was damaged & the insurers have returned my hard drive and are supplying me with a new MacBook Pro.
The data on the Hard drive is encrypted with FileVault from 10.3.someting.....
What's the best way to proceed, with regards to getting the few files off of there I need?
I've seen some articals regarding linking the drive via Firewire and ensuring there are no User Accounts on the new machine & using the import facility on 10.5...... However, I am unsure whether the primary [admin account ] is comsidered to be a user or not - so how do I do that?
Or
Could I just spark up the new MacBook from the old drive & switch off the FileVault? Will the Macbook be happy booting from an external from a Powerbook? I don't have a Firewire enclosure, but do have an USB enclosure.... will that matter other than speed?
If I do boot from the external, should I do that BEFORE my first use of the new machine or after?
Thank you
Rob
ps Sorry if not asked in quite the right place - unsure if machine or OS question!

Hmmm! Iknow you shouldn't be the first reply to your own postings.... but:-
I read somewere that it would have to be Firewire as the USB ports abecome active after the system starts to boot where as the Firewire are active frm the Firmware - can someone confirm that on please?
Would I be able to boot up an old Clamshell iBook from a Powerbook disk? I have a Clamshell somewhere - I could pop the disk in there maybe?
Or maybe an iMac... If I can find a Firewire enclosure.... Was hoping to do it from USB as I have 1 of those external 'connect all disk adapters' on USB thingys....
I'l see if a friendly local repairer has a carcase I can pop the drive in to just decrypy the FileVault........ But prefer to do it myself!

Used disk space on new MacBook: mystery!

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for