What is the startup disk that the iMac says is full?

Where is the startup disk and how can I access it to delete files.

Do a search for and downlaod and install OmniDisk Sweeper and OnyX.
Hard drive getting full or near full?
Here are some of my tips for deleting or archiving data off of your internal hard
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 use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!
Other things you can do to gain space.
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive older emails you want to save to disc, Flash drive/s or to ext. hard drive.
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive to disc, Flash drive or ext. hard drive and/or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Uninstall apps that you no longer use. If the app has a dedicated uninstaller, use it to completely uninstall the app. If the app has no uninstaller, then just drag it to the OS X Trash icon and empty the Trash.
Also, if you save old downloaded .dmg application installer files, you can either archive and delete these or just delete the ones you think you'll never install, again.
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
When you install and launch it, let it do its thing initially, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run all of the processes in the tabs. 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.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be thinned out, moved, also, to the external hard drive and then either archived to disc, Flash drive or ext. hard drive and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
Good Luck!

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Migration Assistant doesn't see the startup disk from the old G4

Hi,
I just got my new iMac and was about to transfer stuff from my old G4 which have two internal disks. But I stumbled into serius problems right away. Migration Assistant is not able to see the startup disk from the G4. It sees only the other disk.
I have tried to disconnect the extra disk and checked that the startup disk is forced with the jumper to be the master disk. With this configuration it won't start the G4 at all. Having he jumper in the cable select slot results to shut-up with the T-button (firewire) startup and normal startup without the T-way.
What should I do? I can't figure out what the problem is.
I enclose some System Profiler data of the problematic disk if this helps to find the solution.
Model: MAXTOR 6L060J3
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 1
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD NAme: disk0s10

Ok. This is really simple to do.
The idea of the dual drive iMac is that the System and Apps reside on the fast SSD and that the user directories reside on the HD.
You first need to create the same accounts on your SSD as on your old iMac.
The next step is to change the path of the user accounts from the SSD to the internal HD. Duplicate or copy the Users directories on the SSD to the HD.
Change the path in System Preferences > User & Groups > Unlock to make changes > Select User account in sidebar > Right-click > Choose Advanced Options > Home Directory > Choose the Volumes/your_hd/Users/user_name.
Restart your iMac and restore from Migration Assistant.
Remember to keep the empty directories on the SSD, in case you ever have a HD failure or replacement, you will have to change the path back to the SSD.

You can't change the startup disk to the selected disk?

System Preferences: Startup Disk: Bootcamp (Windows 7 64): "You can't change the startup disk to the selected disk. The bless tool unable to set bootcamp disk"

I got the same problem, only with Win 7, but after a day's search on the net I found a solution. Something very simple and easy to use.
Open up Terminal and run the following command, where DISK NAME is the name of the disk you want to boot in. PS. use the quotes (") if you disk's name is longer than 2 words.
sudo bless -mount /Volumes/"DISK NAME" -setBoot
THIS WORKED FOR ME!!

You can't change the startup disk to the selected disk: Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed.??

I recently installed windows 8 with boot camp and now I'm getting this error whenever I try to switch my default boot partition to mac os.. does anyone know how to fix this?

I got the same problem, only with Win 7, but after a day's search on the net I found a solution. Something very simple and easy to use.
Open up Terminal and run the following command, where DISK NAME is the name of the disk you want to boot in. PS. use the quotes (") if you disk's name is longer than 2 words.
sudo bless -mount /Volumes/"DISK NAME" -setBoot
THIS WORKED FOR ME!!

My Macbook doesn't recognise the startup disk

I started having problems with Yosemite and lion (installed in the same hard drive, different partitions) so i erase all and instal mavericks, the macbook is late 2009 stock but i don't have startup disk, when i install mavericks it tells me that wont boot and it went an error trying to install, so i am able to boot with the alt key but my mac doesn't recognise de boot disk, when i try to select the startup disk on preferences it tells me: "You can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. The bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk.", what i can do, i can boot with the alt key but it doesn't boot automatically.

If you erase a drive, then in order to install Lion or later you must first install Snow Leopard 10.6.8. You can install Snow Leopard using the installer discs that came with your computer when it was new. You can then update the version of Snow Leopard to 10.6.8 by downloading the combo updater.

My MacBook Air keeps alerting that the startup disk is full and I've deleted applications, iTunes and MobileSync backups. What else??

I don't consider myself an advanced Mac user but I'm really trying to use my Macbook Air much more than I do... but the biggest hurdle for me is that it's been alerting me that the startup disk has been full for several months now no matter what I do. I'm on 10.9.1 OSX and can't even update to the newer version because I'm always out of space. I have 4GIGs of memory and a 60GB SSD of which 52GB are in use. Using OmniDisk Sweeper, I see I have 14.6 GB in Library of which 8.1 GB is Mail and 5GB is Application Support (and I have nearly 480 MB in Caches and 191 in Containers, 131MB in Messages). As for the rest, I've deleted my iTunes content multiple times but my iTunes library STILL says 1.7GBs in Music. I also have 672MB in Movies which I moved to an external drive and trashed so I'm not sure what still exists here. I only have 2 movie files and I deleted them both! I also have 16.9 MB in hob, whatever that is.
I have 32.8 MB in Logs, 19.8 in Safari, 7.9 MB in Calendars, 5.6MB in Google, 4.3MB in Preferences (!!), and 1.6MB in GameKit (not sure what this is), 1.1MB in KeyChains.
I'm just not sure what's going on. I have everything backed up via SuperDuper on a huge external drive and when I delete on my Mac, it doesn't seem to "take." Is is syncing that's the problem? Are my iTunes music files from my iPhone reinstalling back on the Mac as are all my photos and movies? I don't have that checked in iTunes so that shouldn't be happening either.
Again, I'm not an advanced user so maybe I'm not completing a final step to make sure it doesn't sync with my other devices (I also have an iPad mini). I like to get messages on my Macbook Air when I'm not near my phone but if it means I have 131MB in Messages that I can't pare down, I'd rather not. I see no way to reduce the Messages file so that it's not so large. I definitely want to get a handle on this before I even consider upgrading to a Macbook with more RAM and a bigger hard drive.
Final thoughts: Should I delete my mail accounts and just check mail on the web? Can I delete most of the files in Application Support or leave them alone? What's the difference between the MobileSync files and the MSYNC files?
Thanks in advance for help!

Go step by step and test.
1. Start up in Safe Mode.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11212
2. Empty Trash.
   http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13806
3. Disk space / Time Machine ?/ Local Snapshots
Local backups
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4878
4. Delete old iOS Devices Backup.
    iTunes > Preferences > Devices
    Highlight the old Backups , press “Delete Backup” and then “OK”.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
5. Re-index Macintosh HD.
    This will take a while. Wait until it is finished.
    System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

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.

HT3680 My 3 year old iMac is freezing and I get a message "startup disk almost full for running applications. delete files..." Where do I find the startup disk and what should I delete?

My 3 year old Mac is having trouble and freezes up from time to time lately. I get a message saying "startup disk almost full, delete files ..." something about having enough room for applications to function. I know my startup disk is the Macintosh HD, but what kind of files do I need to delete and how much space do I need to free up? In my "about this mac" area, it says I have 4.89gb free out of 319.21 So I am confused why I need to do this.

You're less than 2% free and should always have at least 15% (my SWAG). Best is to get an ext FWHD and move stuff from the startup disk to it and delete it from that. Best things to move are movies, music, and photos, using the apps that manage those things.

I'm trying to up grade the os but I keep getting the startup disk is full I ordered more memory I was told this will not help. What do I do?

I'm trying to up grade the os but I keep getting the startup disk is full I ordered more memory I was told this will not help. What do I do?

I think as drive capacities increase, the old 10-15% becomes less accurate. The amount of free space you need doesn't really have anything to do with the drive size. So, increasing your drive size shouldn't mean that you need to have more free GB (which using a % of drive space would mean). You need free space to accommodate page outs (the amount of which would depend on how much RAM you have installed and how memory intensive the applications are), sleep images (again, this would max out at your total amount of RAM), and a bit to minimize fragmentation.
With desktop drives commonly in the 2TB range today, it is certainly not necessary to have 200GB+ free in order to maintain proper operation. I generally find about 30GB to be the minimum I'm comfortable with. Mind you, I pretty much always have way more than that available. But, if I'm working on a system and the amount of free space is at least 30GB, I would generally not site drive space as the cause of any performance issues. I'd say that 30GB is a minimum for a stable system (with 8GB or RAM installed). Of course at that amount, you would still need to free up space if you were to want to install or download any significant amount of data.
With servers being more likely to run into the 16GB of RAM range, more storage would be necessary. Most servers should be well stocked with storage, but the actual needs would vary greatly depending on what's being "served".
The 10-15% thing came about when we used to talk about drive capacities in hundreds of MBs and RAM in terms of KB (not MB and certainly not GB). More drive space is always a good thing, but as drive capacities continue to sky rocket, we don't need to dedicate larger amounts of storage on systems with the same specifications. A set amount of space is required for proper operation regardless of the capacity of the drive installed.

I am unable to start up my iMac running on 10.4.11 - the startup disk is installed and will not start up eben when I hold down the "C" Key. I do get the apple, but then it disappears.

I am unable to start up my iMac running on 10.4.11 - the startup disk is installed and will not start up eben when I hold down the "C" Key. I do get the apple, but then it disappears.

Query by serial number
Apple's warrenty database will identify the type of Mac you have. Your serial number is securely sent, but you get only the name of your machine.
https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do
This site provides more information, but lacks security.
"A serial number is a unique, identifying number or group of numbers and letters assigned to an individual piece of hardware or software. It's used for various things depending on the product / brand but what is your Mac's serial number for and more importantly... what is it hiding and what can it do for you ?"
http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com/Desktop/index.php
or
This site provides more information, but lacks security too.
"A serial number is a unique, identifying number or group of numbers and letters assigned to an individual piece of hardware or software. It's used for various things depending on the product / brand but what is your Mac's serial number for and more importantly... what is it hiding and what can it do for you ?"
http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com/Desktop/index.php
http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html
( hint by K Shaffer )

What is OTHERS mean under the startup disk category???

Hello guys, I am facing troubles with the Startup disk. I am getting the message that says " your start up disk is full"...this is not the case, the problems is the category OTHER, i could not find which files goes under that ?? the other categories such as photos, and movies are clear.
I want to know what kind of files goes under category OTHERS so i find them and ears them.
Pleas help...

Grand perspective is fine. But why does every progressive update of Ios make it more difficult to execute such regular maintainence/ why should i have to download a second party piece of software and sit through a long scan just to find the "other" files that are suddenly filling my hard drive? I freed up to 60 GB three weeks ago and now I'm down to 4GB. Since they were the likely suspect, I deleted my iphone and ipad back-ups. I deleted them all because I couldn't figure out on lion how to delete the latest ones. still only got back 8 GB. Something unexplainable is eating all my disc space and it should be easier to find it. Maybe the "it just works" motto has finally crossed into PC micro management lunacy.

Hello, Trying to run Bootcamp on my 15" Macbook Pro (Maverick).60 gig available on my computer's hard drive and 250 gig on a separate hard drive that I have attached which is single partitioned. Keeps saying "The startup disk does not have enough space"

Hello,
I'm trying to run Bootcamp on my 15" Macbook Pro (Maverick). I have 60 gig available on my computer's hard drive and have 250 gig on a separate hard drive that I have attached, which is single partitioned (MS-DOS FAT). It keeps saying "The startup disk does not have enough space, you must have 28 gig of free space available" Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the advice Bob The Fisherman. I'm just reading what turbostar has kindly written and it appears that perhaps, if I take advice from you both, I need to free more space up on the computer's hard drive?
With the external hard drive; would it be advisable to defragment? Know of any defrag freeware for Mac OSX?
Many thanks to you both.

What is the startup disk

my mac gives me the message that the startup disk is almost full, what can i do?

You may find this Link helpful...
http://macmost.com/what-to-do-when-your-hard-drive-is-full.html

My MacPro says the startup disk is too full. I have 4 internal hard drives that have 2T each so there is plenty of space, but all start up programs, libraries, iTunes and application folder are on the '1st' hard drive. Can I move any to 2nd drive?

My MacPro says the startup disk is too full. I have 4 internal hard drives that have 2T each so there is plenty of space, but all start up programs, libraries, iTunes and application folder are on the '1st' hard drive. Can I move any to 2nd drive?

Your system will likely fit just fine on a small fast 250GB SSD
What you have is lots of stuff that should not be on the boot drive, data and graphics or media files and libraries that should be moved to another drive.
If you are getting a message like this, STOP, off load files, make room, and make sure to have 15% free or more.
Do not try to move anything from system and its library and sub folders. Move your home user account and just leave the essential home library but move all the rest.
A full drive can have trouble finding free space segments and writing out updates to files and to the directory. And loss of directory means loss of where files are located and their segments.

I RECEIVE MASAGE THAT TARTUP DISK IS FULL. KINDLY ASSIST WITH HOW TO DECONGEST THE STARTUP DISK OR OTHER OPTIONS?

Dear all,
I have this massage that says the startup disk is full, how can I decongest it?

It would help to know what you were doing when you received the message. It is always wise to leave about 10 to 15% of your HDD capacity free so that there is plenty of workspace for temporary files and so on. If you have a lot of movies or thousands of photos (especially RAW files) then your disk very well might be reaching its workable limit. The safest solution is to have a reliable backup (such as Time Machine) where the contents are stored, then you could do a safety redundant backup of your movies, photos and audio by copying them to a different external HDD, then remove them from the internal drive. In that way they would be accessible for restoration by way of Time Machine, or they would be accessible as files from the external. The prices of external drives are now very low and affordable so the purchase of a 1TB or 2TB HDD is no longer prohibitive. Any long-time user will tell you that 'backup' + 'backup of the backup' [that is: redundant backup] is never a bad idea when working with important files. The time to do this is NOW before a drive failure not after when it might be impossible.

What is the startup disk that the iMac says is full?

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