Why can't I free up space on my MacBook hard drive?

My MacBook has 2 GB of space left, so I moved over 60 GB worth of movies from iMovie HD (including the application itself) to a hard drive and deleted it all off my MacBook. I then emptied the trash and went to check the space left now and it STILL SAY 2GB LEFT!! Can anybody tell me why I'm not freeing up any space on my hard drive? What gives?

Try restarting the computer, and if it still isn't showing the additional space try:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
And, if this doesn't do it then you need to backup the drive, boot from your Leopard DVD, open Disk Utility on the DVD and erase your hard drive then reinstall Leopard.

Similar Messages

I am trying to open space in my macbook hard drive, so I deleted files and after emptying the trash bin the amount of Gigs didn't increase, why? Where can I go and delete those files?

I am trying to open space in my macbook hard drive, so I deleted files and after emptying the trash bin the amount of Gigs didn't increase, why? Where can I go and delete those files?

Did you do a secure empty trash? SHIFT COMMAND DELETE, they will be over wriiten. Are you deleting docs as they aren't much space, videos,pictures,music use much more space.
You can move those fiels to an external "archive" drive to save them then delete them from your internal drive.

Why can't I simply drag music from my external hard drive to my ipod classic?

Why can't I simply drag music from my external hard drive to my ipod classic using my mac?

downpat wrote:
So after I get my music put on my computer, then moved to my ipod, do I have to delete music from itunes to free up space?
Not a good idea.
What you could do, is have the Library content on the external hard drive and simply tell your iTunes programme to look on the hard drive for your music etc.. However, once you set that up, that hard drive needs to be connected and ready to read, before you start the iTunes programme. If it isn't ready, iTunes will simply go back to the default location for the music, find nothing and then you'll be back here saying that you've lost your Library.

Can anyone give step-by-step instructions for moving my iPhoto library to my external hard drive to free up space on my internal hard drive?

I want to move my iPhoto from my internal hard drive to an external hard drive to free up space. Can it be moved entirely and function the same as before with all features and the software itself on the hard drive? Also, can anyone give step by step instructions on how to do this? I'm having a difficult time figuring this out on my own by trying to search through Apple support.

Oops...
Here you go...
iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
Make sure that the EXT Drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled).
That's what iPhoto Likes...

Why can't I read or write from my external hard drive?

Hey there, I recently borrowed my brother's laptop to use as a media station for listening to music from, and watching movies, in order to free up some space on my main macbook. In trying to migrate some files over, I discovered that my hard drive, a 320 GB WD Elements drive, is having some problems which I've never encountered before. It has always worked fine in the past, but now I can't transfer any files to or from it, from either computer. In all of my troubleshooting, I've gotten various errors, (-36, -50), and various messages saying how the device can't be read or written from, or how some files contian unreadable data, etc.
Disk Utility found an unused node when verifying the disk, and notified me that the disk needed to be repaired. I then used Disk Utility, which said it was able to successfully repair it, but the same problem remains, and after verifying the disk, it still says it needs to be repaired. I've tried to find any files that may be causing the problem, and was finally able to delete a seemingly troublesome file that was stuck in my trash bin from the external drive after trying various apps, (ie Trash It, Cocktail, What's Keeping Me?). This didn't end up solving anything...I've used terminal to eliminate some other potentially problematic files, with no luck still, and I'm not too confident with Terminal so I don't want to be messing around too much without more guidance.
Most recently, I've used Disk Warrior to try to solve the problem, but still with no success. When I use the app to Check All Files and Folders, it does so for only a few seconds, then reports that "An unexpected error ocurred while attempting to perform file operations" for several files, and that several files' "Property list is damaged and cannot be repaired". When using Disk Warrior to REBUILD the drive, the app pauses for about 15 seconds, then says that it can't be rebuilt because it is in use. Again, I've used the What's Keeping Me? app to kill any activity with the drive, and the same error occurs.
I've spent a lot of time trying to sort this out...It's very frustrating, and I have a lot of files that mean a lot to me on my drive, so any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks a lot!
Ryan

I have this problem too with my Western Digital 1TB My Passport for Mac.
Downloaded Card Data Recovery - did not work. The software self terminated itself when the problematic WD is connected. Starts up fine when the WD is not connected by USB.
Then I downloaded Remo Recovery. Starts up fine, scans fine and appears to save the files but ALL the files 'saved' are unreadable.
Finally, downloaded Stellar Phoenix in a last ditch attempt to recover my precious video files. Starts fine, saves fine BUT it cannot save files above 200MB because the WD stops working every 10 minutes.So, did not solve my problem totally because I have so many files above 200MB.
And yes, I PAID for all the software above. And the first two software are reluctant to refund me my money until their development team can ascertain whether it's a software bug, over online web conference. And because of the time differences, I can never get online with them. So, all my money gone.
Until one day I opened Activity Monitor and noticed this 'fsck_hfs' starting up everytime I connected the problematic WD My Passport for Mac.
So, tried to Force Quit 'fsck_hfs' and VOILA!
A dialogue box popped up and says that the Passport for Mac cannot be repaired and that I can move and copy files from it but not save to it.
PHEW!!
At least I can access the files and save them to my Seagate 1TB although now I am having a problem opening FCP X project files rescued from the WD.

Why can't iTunes find the music from an external hard drive?

I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop. Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music. I have to go through and manually select a song for it to find it one and then it says should it use this to find the rest of the songs. Then it crashes. I have reinstalled iTunes tonight with no real improvement. I want to be able to create a playlist to upload to my new iPad as well as updating music on my iPod but I can't do any of it. Please, any advice!

angelafromlanchester wrote:
I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop. Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music.
Has the new laptop given the external drive a different drive letter?
The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links.
If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
tt2

Why can't I install Snow Leopard on my videos hard drive?

I have a Mac Pro with four hard drives. Lion is on the primary drive but I need Snow Leopard for a legacy app. My plan is to install Snow Leopard on a hard drive that I use for video projects, and then restart from that drive when I need to use the old app. The problem is that the Snow Leopard installation disk says that it can't install onto the videos hard drive unless I partition the hard drive, which will erase all the data. Why can't it install onto the videos hard drive? There's no operating system on that hard drive. The hard drive has folders for Final Cut Express Projects, iMovie Events, iMovie Projects, DVDs movies I've ripped, a folder of music, and an iDVD project. What do I need to remove to enable installing Snow Leopard?

If I understand what you are saying you have a drive with "stuff" already on it and you want to install a version of OSX on to it while still retaining that "stuff". If that's what you want to do you cannot do that mainly because there's already "stuff" on that drive.
The only way you can do this is to either of the following:
a. Copy the "stuff" off that drive to another drive. Install the OS. Copy the "stuff" back on to the newly created boot drive.
b. Copy the "stuff" off that drive on to another drive. Partition the drive into at least 2 partitions; one for the boot and one for the "stuff". Install the OS into one of the partitions. Copy the "stuff" back to the other partition.
Either way, if you want to use that disk for a boot disk, you got to get that "stuff" out of the way to do the OSX install on to that disk.

Why can't iTunes play music from read-only external hard drive?

I have a write-protected external hard-drive which I keep all of my iTunes media on. iTunes recognizes all of the files, including the metadata on the id3 tags, and can find the files in Windows Explorer. However, it cannot play the files while the drive remains write-protected. Is there a work around for this as I would prefer to keep the hard-drive protected? Why does iTunes require write-access to play songs? Other media players have no problem playing from my read-only external hard-drive. Thanks for any help

Welcome to the Apple Community.
When you say you can't play through both devices at the same time, what happens when you try, are you able to select multiple speakers, do they deselect themselves, do you not get the option or does it just not work when you select multiple speakers.

How can I open up more space on my external hard drive for Time Machine?

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I use with Time Machine. I believe I have half designated for Time Machine and the other half to use as an external drive to put whatever I want on it. My issue is that now my Time Machine back up needs more than 250GB of space.
How can I make more space available on Time Machine and less for the external half (maybe split it 400/100 for example) or just designate the whole 500GB for Time Machine?
Am I going to have to reformat the hard drive? I'm trying to do this in a way that I'm not going to risk losing what might already be on Time Machine...
I'm not sure how well I'm explaining this. Hopefully someone can help.
Amanda

I would also suggest you get a 2nd, much larger hard drive, partition it if desired, move your data to it, and start a 2nd Time Machine backup on it. You can set Time Machine to alternate between the 2 drives by adding the new drive to System Preferences/Time Machine. If you want to make a copy of your current backup on the new drive, you can do that using the Disk Utility Restore tab. If you chose to do that, make the copy first since using the Restore tab erases all data on the drive or the partition.

Is it possible for me to move my movies and tv folder to a second hard drive on my computer to free up space on my main hard drive?

The main hard drive on my laptop is close to full, and it's the movies and tv folders of my itunes that is taking up pretty much all the space. I was just wondering if it were possible to move just that folder onto a second hard drive my laptop has and still be able to view the videos on itunes. Also, is it possible to tell itunes where to download future vidoes?

You can move the entire iTunes Media folder to another drive.
This Apple document will walk you through it -> iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
If you just grab the movies folder and drag it to the external drive, iTunes won't know where the movies are.

Why can't I import video files from an external hard drive?

I am using Adobe Premiere Elements 12 on Mac OSX 10.7.5 trying to import video files from a Lacie Rugged External Hard Drive using both firewire and usb, neither with any luck. The error message I receive is:
"You're trying to import a file from a DVD or a Removable Media. Please use Video Importer for importing Videos and Image Importer for importing images. "
We can't import through the video importer either because the hard drive doesn't show up. We can, however, drag the videos to the desktop and do it that way but we'd like to avoid doing that if possible.
Thanks
By the way, the external hard drive is formatted FAT32 if that matters

Tacomedia
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-set-up-an-external-hard-drive-for-use-with-os-x/
Please check out the above with regard to your external hard drive FAT32 and Mac computer question
By the way, the external hard drive is formatted FAT32 if that matters
SG has already commented on this in his initial reply to you. I thought that the above might blend in to supplement what he has said.
I will watch for further developments in your troubleshooting with SG.
ATR

Why can't i click on repair disk for my hard drive in disk utility?

I have an iMac from 2010 and when I went to install the new OS (Yosemite) I got stuck in the screen where the install couldn't be verified. I opened up disk utility and when I went to verify my Mac HD. The verify failed and I got a popup window that said the disk needed to be repaired and to click on "repair disk". However the repair disk button is not lighting up and there's no way for me to click it. Everything else that I could verify was fine, the only thing that had a problem was the hard drive. Does someone know if there's anyway I can repair it? Please help, I haven't been able to use my computer for days now!

Try booting from the recovery partition and seeing if you can repair the disk drive from there.

How can I partition the remaining space on an external hard drive for use in Time Machine?

I backed up files from my old macbook to this external drive. I want to use all remaing space for time machine on my new Air that runs OSX Lion. Please help

It is usually recommended that your keep a clone of your HD and your Time Machine backup on different drives.
You don't want your backup drive to fail and lose both your clone and your TM backup.
The answer to your question is to use Disk Utility to partition your drive. Again, you should have a backup of your drive before you partition it.
Launch Disk Utility, select your external drive > Partition > Resize the partition by sliding the tab at the lower right corner of the image > Create a new partition with the space that has been freed up.

Why can't I edit SOME pictures on the external hard drive in iPhoto?

I have moved my iPhoto Library to an external drive. I can see all photos in the thumbnail, but there are several pictures that when I click on them to edit, the screen is black, while others show up. I'm confused.

If in the middle of that black window is an exclamation point then iPhoto has lost link to the original file. If you're running a "managed" library (copy image file into the library when imported) try the two fixes below in order as needed:
Fix #1
Launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys depressed and follow the instructions to rebuild the library. Select all options.
Fix #2
Rebuild the library using iPhoto Library Manager as follows:
Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library
1 -Download iPhoto Library Manager and launch.
2 -Click on the Add Library button, navigate to your User/Pictures folder and select your iPhoto Library folder.
3 - Now that the library is listed in the left hand pane of iPLM, click on your library and go to the File->Rebuild Library menu option
4 - In the next window name the new library and select the location you want it to be placed.
5 - Click on the Create button.
Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments but not books, calendars or slideshows. The original library will be untouched for further attempts at fixing or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.

Why can't I import photos saved onto my iphone hard drive onto my computer to delete them off my phone?

Every time I try to import photos onto iphoto I am only allowed to import photos I have taken on my iphone 5s, but not from my previous phone. I cannot upgrade my phone because I have so many photos on it. I want to delete the photos that were transferred onto my iphone from my previous phone, but I can't find them using my laptop.

I am struggling with similar difficulties.
I use an iMac G5 (Power PC) and a Canon PowerShot G6, which have been compatible with each other for 14 months. A couple of weeks ago, the Canon's rechargable battery ran low and, instead of connecting the camera to the iMac via the USB cable, I removed the SanDisk CompactFlash Ultra II card and imported photos on it via a SanDisk upload USB device. [The G6 manual recommends connecting the camera only when the battery is fully charged.] After the battery recharged, I took more photos and tried to upload them via the original Canon-supplied USB cable, but iPhoto did not launch. Because the camera turns on and indicates it's connected , I know it's not the USB cable [I actually ordered a new one, but the results are the same]. I've tried reformatting the SanDisk card in the camera, but this hasn't corrected the problem. However, if I connect the SanDisk device with card to the USB hub, iPhoto launches, identifying the device as "CANON_DC", complete with the little "eject" icon.
What am I forgetting? What would be the next step? Reinstalling the Canon software?
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Why can't I free up space on my MacBook hard drive?

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