What are the "other" files on the hard drive and how can I reduce them

Advice please - what are the "other" files on my hard drive and can I reduce or clear them - currently taking up over 90 gig of disk space

WZZZ wrote:
"Other" than what?
In About This Mac > Storage -
...the yellow stuff.
I believe "Other" is primarily System and System-related files.

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Transferring iTunes files to external hard drive - now iTunes can't find them

I believe I have really effed up my iTunes library. My basic question is once the links in iTunes have been broken are there only two ways to get them back (one being going through every title and locating it on the drive vs two starting fresh and copying all the song files into iTunes and recreating all the play lists).
I have over 10,000 titles accumulated over many years and sorted into a couple dozen playlists to keep track of each family member's music on various pods / phones etc. I was running out of internal hard drive space so I tried moving the files over to an external drive in order to free up the internal drive. I thought I was following the instructions correctly, but something has gone horribly wrong. I'll try to take you through the steps as best as I can.
I had changed the iTunes preferences to show the external drive, and when importing new songs they were stored on that external drive. I thought everything was working fine as all the files showed in the Finder on the external srive so I deleted the files from the internal drive. Of course this was the wrong thing to do as at that point iTunes could only locate the newly imported files and none of the old ones.
So I began to panic and searched the support and communities and tried a number of things that were recommended including copying the files back to the same spot on the internal drive, changing the preferences, and I also tried consolidating the files under the File / Library / Consolidate FIles. This made another folder in the iTunes folder called music (my previous folder was called iTunes music inside the iTunes folder). I have tried these steps on both the internal drive as well as the external drive. So now on either drive, iTunes will reconzie maybe 20-25% of the files. I think these 25% have been moved to the new folder iTunes and the file number has a 1 appended to the end. So now for each file I have 2 to 4 copies. One copy is in the Itunes music folder on the internal drive. A second copy is in the iTunes music folder on the external drive. I believe that iTunes cannot find either of these ones. The third copy with a 1 appended is in the Music folder on the internal drive and the fourth copy (also with a 1 appended) is in the Music folder on the external drive and as I said I think iTunes "sees" these files.
So my question is, is there only two ways to fix this (both of which are incredibly time consuming) - one to point each unknown file to the external drive (about 8,000 files at least to do), or the other is to start from nothing and drag all the music files in and recreate the playlists (I think this would be more work since some of the songs were on multiple playlists). Is there nothing else other than a month of solid work in front of me!?!

just download one of the following apps which will solve your problem of converting videos as this apps plays almost every video files, first 2 apps are paid ones
GOOD player (very good)
AV player
VLC player (free in tunes)

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i do not understand why it is so big, it has grown by 3 gb today alone. I also have smaller "other" folders on my ipad and iphone but they are only 1gb.
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Read: http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html

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OK Jim Hess, that step is done. So on the hard drive, can I now delete:
1. the "extra" LR catalog?
2. the Elements 10 Catalog (which I had previously imported into one of the LR catalogs?
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thanks in advance.

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<Branched to a new discussion to fit the topic and the age of the original thread.>
Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator

Georgep_VZW
Thanks, I found the same advice the same day on a forum. It worked fine & now I have no "Ads" or scoops.
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IMHO,
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I went to the Apple Store at the Grove on Friday. An employee there printed out these instructions:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
I followed the instructions. All my music is on my external hard drive now (My Book). When I open Itunes all the songs in the entire library have a circle with ! in them.
It says the song could not be used because the file could not be found. When I search My Book the song plays and the ! is removed. I have several thousand songs. Do I have to do this with each and every one?
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Thanks, Vicki

Try this -> iTunes Track CPR v1.3

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iTunes>Preferences (Cmd+,)>Advanced
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Ojin

What does “I overwrote the information in Accounts” mean? What exactly did you do? More info, please.
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Remove Account
Are you sure you want to remove the <AccountType> account "<AccountName>"?
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I recently had some 8mm film transferred to DVD. I am trying to edit the film clips using Premier Elements 4.0. Some of the film clips copy into the project but others don't. I tried copying the VOB filed onto my hard drive and then changing the file ext

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Bob

Bob
What do you have now.....
What computer operating system do you have?
We can go into the finer points of source and your intentions, but for now it would appear that you are using SD 4:3 source media to get to a HD 16:9 result. Lots to discuss in this regard.
What was given to you on the DVD disc? DVD-VIDEO 4:3 or something else?
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Does the above scenario apply to you?
The alternative might be someone giving a DVD disc (data disc) which contains just the VTS files mentioned which were copied from
the VIDEO_TS Folder. So, you do not get the whole VIDEO_TS Folder, just the essential video files. Does this scenario apply to you.
I see no need to replace your Premiere Elements 4 with a later version unless you have a huge project and need a later version that will be a 64 bit application running specifically on Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 64 bit computer.
Consider...Premiere Elements 4 and if you have DVD-VIDEO on DVD....
1. Place the DVD disc in the burner tray
2. Open Premiere Elements 4 and set the project preset for NTSC DV Standard (assuming you are working in a NTSC setup)
3. Go to
Get Media
"DVD, Digital Camera, Mobile Phone, Hard Drive Camcorder, Card Reader"
"Adobe Premiere Elements - Media Downloader" and its Advanced dialog.
Set the Source in the latter dialog for the drive which has your DVD disc inserted in its tray
You should see your VTS_01_1.VOB thumbnail in the "Adobe Premiere Elements - Media Downloader" Advanced dialog.
With this VOB selected, click on Get Media to get the file from there into the project.
Should work fine.
Complications may be involved if the people who processed your footage gave you something other what is described above.
Please review and consider, and then we can plan our project strategy accordingly.
Thank you.
ATR

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Thank-you

How Do I Get Rid Of The “Other” Data Stored On My iPad Or iPhone?
http://tinyurl.com/85w6xwn
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 Cheers, Tom

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iPad not appearing in iTunes
http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/assistant/itunes/
iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Mac OS X
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1591
iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1538
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4235
IOS: Syncing with iTunes
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1386
Apple - Support - iPad - Syncing
http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/syncing/
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 Cheers, Tom

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What are the "other" files on the hard drive and how can I reduce them

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