When your hard drive is full

My 1tb hard drive on my 27" imac is almost full.
I'm not interested in the tedious prosess of going through folders and deleting applications and files I don't use anymore. I want to keep everything.
I would like to just copy the whole 1tb storage onto an external hard drive and delete the onboard 1tb storage on the imac and start from scratch (on the imac) all over again.
Then, if I need anythign from the "old" storage I could just plug in the external 1tb and grab it.
I have time machine backing everything up but is that the correct way to do this? I don't think that's what time machine is designed for. Or is it? What are the best practices in doing something like this. If I had a "tower" then I would just pull the hardrive out and put a new hard drive in.
1) What are the best practices in backing up a hardrive so you can retrieve things easily.
2) What are the best practices is deleting the old hard drive to start all over again. (if it was windows I'd reinstall but I don't think Apple will let me re-download the os)
Please help. Thanks in advance!

For what you want to do, Time Machine isn't the best. I don't recommend you to keep your data only with Time Machine, so now you have two options:
1. If you have more than 1 TB of free space on the external drive, you can create a partition in it > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html Then, use the Restore feature to copy the OS X volume into the new partition of the external drive > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU7.html
2. Get a new external drive and format it in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU1.html Then, use the Restore feature to copy the OS X volume into the external drive > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU7.html
Finally, you can erase the hard drive and reinstall OS X

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?When your hard drive crashes

I had about 400 compact discs and a few itunes worth of music on my itunes when my hard drive crashed.
My music is still on my ipod but it seems if I put anything on my new itunes folder on my new hard drive, I'll lose my old music when I sync.
Is this correct?
I'd appreciate any help on how to live with this lost data on my hard drive.
Message was edited by: acb3
Message was edited by: acb3

Hi. Welcome to the forums.
Yes, Your new install will want to overwrite the iPod with a blank library given half a chance. Check out this post from Zevoneer for some iPod recovery options.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6273675&#6273675
Should explain how you can drag your music back from the iPod. I've used the manual method successfully in the past. Some of the other tools can take a long time to catalogue the iPod so be patient.
tt2

How to restore the OS when your hard drive fails...

So I recently bought a Y50-70 from Newegg. Being that I hate Windows 8/8.1 with a passion I made sure to find a laptop that runs Windows 7. Lucky for me (and one of the reasons I bought this laptop) is that I should be able to run Windows 8.1, 7, and Linux without problems. Woohoo.
I should note that this is my first Lenovo, so I'm not too privy to the intricacies of Lenovo products yet. I've been told to avoid them like the plague and I'm trying to prove that things aren't as bad as my friends say, but I'm rapidly deciding their wisdom should have been heeded.
Just like every time I buy a laptop, the first thing I do is make a direct sector-for-sector copy of the hard drive.
After that I booted up and made the "recovery disk" in Windows 8.1 just for future security. So 32GB thumbdrive is now dedicated for reinstalling Windows since the laptop comes with no recovery media.
Ok, so far so good.
Now, I blew away all of the partitions and installed Windows 7. It's not all peaches and cream and there's some problems. So I thought I'd go back to Windows 8.1 and see if these problems are software or hardware in nature.
So I pulled out my trusty USB stick, and lo and behold you can't actually reinstall the OS if you've deleted the recovery partition. I checked that box that says something about including a copy of the recovery partition, but you can't recover the OS even after doing that. Every time I get a message about the harddrive being locked or no image being present (I forget the exact error because I'm about 24 hours from demanding a full refund and mailing this thing back).
So, assuming I have Windows 8.1 fully installed, what is the proper method to backup the OS in a fashion that is restorable on something like a disk failure where you install a new blank hard disk and then need to do a recovery. Does this not exist for my laptop? I've always been told that the Windows 8.1 recovery disk creator was the solution, but it clearly isn't.
Anyone know the proper method for this scenario?

Hi,
Sorry to hear this hasn't worked out like it's supposed to. I've used recovery flash drives without problems, but have also seen that the "drive locked" problem does occur. I'm not sure that it's a Lenovo issue. Seems to be more a generic Windows restore problem that happens with some drive configurations.
That doesn't help you - I chimed in to say that if you haven't already, you might call support and explain your situation. I can't/don't speak for Lenovo, but when I've had recovery issues in the past with a new laptop they've provided the recovery media gratis.
(Apologies if I missed that you've already called...)
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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Re-Downloading Purchased Items When Your Hard Drive is Wiped

Hello everyone within Apple staff and everyone within the Apple community. I have just finally recovered my lost apple account that was started back in 2006 and was lost in 2008. I have used the account since about January 2008 because my laptop crashed and I never got back on my account because i forgot my password and the ipod that I had purchased broke. So all of my purchases from 2006 to 2008 were lost except for the purchases i placed on my little brothers IPOD. I was able to salvage four purchases from his ipod. But when I checked on the store to see my purchase history I have two pages of purchases and about 10 dollars. All I want is to be able to redownload my music videos and tv shows from my account because when my computer crashed in 2008 everything went with it. I cannot transfer anything from my previous ipod because it broke as well. With my old laptop's hard-drive wiped and no ipod to transfer purchases from I am at a lost for all the money I spent on the itunes store. I would really love to get my two pages of items returned to my account and new ipod touch so that I can enjoy them again. I feel that I have spent a lot of money on these items and I just want to be able to use them again, instead of looking at them on a past bill. If someone could please show me how to gain my files back it would be grateful. Thank you.

Click here and ask. Regardless of whether or not the request is granted, back up all of your purchases. A copy on an iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV shouldn't be considered a backup.
(49594)

How do I turn off file vault when my hard drive is full?

I am trying to migrate all my files onto a new MacBook Pro but my current computer has file vault turned on. To turn it off and decrypt my user home folder I need more space on my hard drive. I have tried cloning my MBP onto a larger external drive and starting up from there but every time I try to shut off file vault I get an error after about a half hour of the process.
What should I try next?

Hi Jeremy,
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.
If 10.7.0 or later...
Bootup holding CMD+r, or the Option/alt key to boot from the Restore partition & use Disk Utility from there to Repair the Disk, then Repair Permissions.

How do you know when your hard drive is failing

Having trouble turning on computer and computer freezing and getting a blue screen. Videos freeze. Do I need a new hard drive for my Imac Hard drive has errors.

Boot your machine with the install disc that came with it, launch Disk Utility and repair the disk. If that passes, then boot your machine with the supplied Apple Hardware Test disc and run the extended tests, at least twice. If that passes, download and run Rember,

Time Machine will not delete the oldest backup when external hard drive is full

I may not understand this timemachine thing, but....
I have macbook pro, 15", mid 2011, mountain lion......I have a WD Passport Studio I have ben using to back up with time machine periodically. I tried to back up today and it says i do not have enough room on my external drive. I tought the time machine automatically deletes the oldest back up?

I agree with Linc's response but you also have to realize that it will keep the oldest backup and start removing snapshots if it can.
It is my undestanding that time machine does what is called a full backup the first time and then the snapshots done after that are changes since the first backup. I'm not sure if time machine then does periodic backups or just snapshots.

I have a Mac book pro with 750 gigs of space but when I check the memory available it's telling me that I have 1.5 gigs of available space and that my scratch hard drive is full. When looking in the color code of storage it's all other consuming the space

Ok so I have a MacBook Pro that has 750 gigs of space but I keep getting an error message that my scratch hard drive us full. When I look at the storage it's saying that I have 1.5 available gigs of space and when I dig deeper it shows that it's not video, audio or document but it's other. What can it be and what can I do about it?

See here for answer about the OTHER which is taking up space:
http://pondini.org/TM/30.html
and here:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
See Kappys excellent note on the rest of “other” files taking up your space:
What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?

When i turn on my mac it has a pop up that reads your startup drive is full how do i empty it

how do i empty my start up drive when it is full

Okay, try starting your Macbook Pro with the original DVD that came with the system. Then start disk utiltiy to repair your hard drive. If you hard drive is full you would need to open the terminal program and delete some files. That could be difficult if you don't know any Unix commands.

Message that hard drive is full when clearly it is not!!!! HELP!!!

This is weird. Got a message that I had 117 mb left on hard drive. Dumped a bunch of programs and pictures. Then it said I had 25 gb on drive. Three days later, having done NOTHING, I got a message I was totally out of hard drive space again. Dumped a couple of programs - back up to 1.84 gb. An hour later it is full FULL AGAIN. I had done NOTHING. What is going on here??? My user folder says I have no space when I go to "get info" but when I check "get info" on all the folders inside (system, library, pictures, music, etc) it only adds up to half of the capacity of my hard drive (250 gbs). So in fact I know I only have less than 100 gb on that computer This is very strange. The drive is not full, and when I dump programs and data, it fills itself back up but can't find out why/how/where. I threw out the finder preferences but that didn't work. I booted up from my Leopard disk and it said my hard drive was full, but I KNOW it is not. What is going on??

Sounds like something is generating garbage. You've got a couple of options (at least) to track it down, starting with one tool built into the command-line interface. Pop open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Termain.app) and type in the following:
cd /
sudo du -hd 1
Enter your password when prompted. du is the Disk Usage command, which will print out the disk space taken up by each folder, including invisible ones. Note that du can take a fair bit of time to complete; my own drive took about 5-6 minutes with only 27GB on it, so yours will probably take longer.
Your other option is to grab Disk Inventory X, a freeware utility which performs a very similar job to du, but with a shiny user interface to help you locate the offending space waster. If you're not comfortable with the terminal, this may be the best place to start.

My hard drive is full even when I delete big files?

I got a notification telling me my hard drive was full. I had been downloading a lot lately so I knew it was going to happen. I then went through and deleted 34GB that I had in one of my folders. But even when I deleted and emptyed my trash my hard drive says it's still full. I showed hidden files but there aren't enough of those to be causing the issue.
I'm planning on getting an external hard drive to free up another 68BG or more of space but until I do I need to know why the 34GB that I deleted didnt free up space.

What version of the Mac OS is running on your MacBook?

MacBook Air saying hard drive is full when it's really not

I have just started getting error messages saying that my startup disk is full, saying I have "Zero KB" available, which makes sense being I have been doing a lot of downloading recently and have been learning Java programming (lots of Java and Class files), and the fact that 80GB isn't a lot of storage space these days (and hasn't been for at least the last 5 years), most notebooks these days have at least 200GB hard drives in them (that is one thing, that as much as I love Macs, has always irked me about them, very little storage space)
I have deleted over 30KB worth of unimportant files to free up some space (one file being 24KB alone), then opened a Finder window only to find out that it still says "Zero KB Available", if I delete 30+KB worth of files, shouldn't there be an equivalent amount of storage space afterwards? It doesn't make any sense that I would still be getting "Zero KB Available" after I deleted 30+KB worth of data
I am not sure if it's related, but for quite a while, I have noticed that my MacBook has been making a clicking noise, this has been happening for quite a while, though I have been hearing it less than before, and just recently I am now hearing what sounds like a screech coming from the MacBook (mostly when I put it on standby by closing the screen, right when the sleep mode initiates), though I have ignored it, being until now, I have not noticed any problems with the MacBook, no loss of data, no corruption, etc., and now the only problem I am experiencing is that it's saying my hard drive is 100% full even after deleting some files, though does fail when I try to verify the disk in Disk Utility
So is there a reasonable explanation for why it's saying my hard drive is full, or is it possible that there could be a potential disk failure?
Message was edited by: Mikedamirault2
Reason for edit: Paragraph Spacing

18tracks, a KB is small, Ill give you that, but the reply you typed alone, if copied to TextEdit and saved in TXT or RTF format should only be several bytes (under a KB), I have Java and Class files with plenty more text in it and they only range from 1KB to 8KBs, way below 30KB, though if I were to save this webpage as an HTML file, then yes, it would probably get close
Regardless, it doesn't matter how little I delete, even if I only delete one 1KB file, it should still say 1KB free, yes that is barely anything, but at least that means it would be accurate
My point, was I deleted 30+KBs worth of data (that is a rough estimate, I am not exactly sure how much I deleted) and Finder STILL said that I had "Zero KB" available, I don't know about you, but 30KB sure sounds like a HUGE difference than 0KB
To me, this means that it doesn't matter if I deleted 1KB, 1MB, or even 1GB worth, Finder would still say that "Zero KB" is available, and the OS will still refuse to save or manipulate files, to me, that's a sign that something much bigger is going on, and with the clicking and screeching going on (which may not necessarily be the hard drive, but you never know), and the fact that my hard drive failed a verification, something tells me my hard drive must not be in good shape, and could possibly be disastrous

HT4914 if you use iTunes match in order to create space and remove music from your hard drive, does that happen automatically when you subscribe and upload your music or is there another step to remove the music from your hard drive once you've uploaded t

if you use iTunes match in order to create space and remove music from your hard drive, does that happen automatically when you subscribe and upload your music or is there another step to remove the music from your hard drive once you've uploaded to iTunes match?

Welcome to the Apple Community.
iTunes match won't automatically remove content from your computer, if you want to do that you will need to do it manually yourself.

When I try to open firefox it pops up, "do you want to allow changes to your hard drive" everytime

Firefox update while I was trying to resolve a issue with a brother fax drive to update for windows 7, now every time I go to firefox it pops up, "Do you want to allow changes on your hard drive" as if it didn't finish, so I answer "yes", firefox browser comes up, but if I get out and go back in it does the same thing.
in the pop up window is listed; C:\program file(x86)Mozilla firefox\firefox.exe
But when I search it, nothing

Check that you do not run Firefox as Administrator.
Right-click the Firefox desktop shortcut and choose "Properties".
In the Compatibility tab, make sure that Privilege Level: "Run this program as Administrator" is not selected.
You also need to check the Properties of the firefox.exe program in the Firefox program directory.
If you can't make the changes then you need to start Windows Explorer as Administrator.

What happens when WAE Cache Hard Drive is full?

Hi,
From a architectual point of view, when does the WAE delete old cache. When the hard drive fills up how does it know what information to delete?
Thanks
Brad

In WAAS, the oldest DRE and CIFS cache data ages out and is deleted when a partition full threshold is reached. This is also true for the /local1/ directory where the log files are kept, so if transaction logging is being done, it should delete the older files first when newer ones are being written. However, each cache aging algorithm is slightly different.
The WAE should be running at maximum efficiency when the disks are actually full and some aging out is happening. You should be getting the most cache hits at this point.
Hope that helps,
Dan

When your hard drive is full

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