Best way to decide on what to delete?

[TuckerdogAVL]

Since I'm having processing speed issues suddenly (it seems to stem to a "FREE" trial version of a program I downloaded yesterday thinking it was an upgrade...I have since trashed it, but things are still a little wonky. But, I digress).

I started checking out some things...and I did move about 5gb of projects, pictures, etc onto an external hard drive.

But here's what I discovered.
I have a 75gb hard drive that has the OS 10.4.11 on it. There is about 34g of space available.

HARDDRIVE/:
Of the almost 40gb of space that has been used...and getting this information also proved tricky as even setting your FINDER to show all data, sizes, etc. doesn't always show everything... here's what I've discovered:

Harddrive/Applications:
4.5gb is applications. I moved a couple I never use but how do I figure out whether things will or won't go wonky if I move them? And obviously, programs like OFFICE have to stay put....

Harddrive/Library:
11.5g is in the LIBRARY.
Of this 5.3gb is Application support. Is there anything that can be eliminated here?
Now, get this 1.6gb is for PRINTERS! Can't I just get rid of everything for printers except the printer I currently use?
970mb is Packages? (This is about 7.5X larger than my FONT file at 130mb).
There's 270mb for receipts. Receipts?

Then, there is USERS:
HARDDRIVE/USERS is 23.5gb
and of that HARDDRIVE/USERS/LIBRARY is 3gb. Again? But, for example, this time, there are only two printer folders, for my two printers. So, there is just too much here to actually tell if everything is in one place or another or all duplicates. But, I assume, that there is a logical reason that there are two libraries with many of the same files duplicated? Or, is this a glitch.

So, finally, I thought perhaps the music files, photos and business project files was the problem. They, in total, take up merely 9gb of space. These would, of course, be the easiest to eliminate, but they aren't really the big problem. The bigger issue seems to be all the other files.

Any way to actually ascertain what is needed and what can be trashed? Like Packages? Receipts? All those Printers? (I know that will "only" free up about 3g but at least I'd feel good about it). :-)

PART 2

1. Does partitioning help with these issues?
2. What is RAID and does that help with sluggish video playback?
3. What is mounting/unmounting in disk utility?
4. What is "new image" and how does this help?
5. What can I run in ONYX that can help eliminate dups and clean up the system?

Thanks again. I don't know what or where I would be if it wasn't for the support from MACOSX. com.

[Satcomer]

The first thing you should do is run some maintenance programs on that Mac. Running something like YASU or Onyx and running all their cleaning routines. To clear and repair a Tiger print driver repair/management you can buy Printer Setup Repair. This will help.

[Giaguara]

Harddrive/Library
and Harddrive/System --- these two folders: don't touch.

1. no. If you partition one disk, it will be slower to get the same data from different partitions than one
2. Unless you have several physical disks, ignore RAID for now. It can make it faster but you need fast access to it to make a difference
3. It mounts or unmounts hte volume...
4. It creates new disk images. It does not help for this issue.
5. Standard maintenance...

If you are not using your system in all included 12 to 20 languages, run Delocalizer and get rid of all but English (and whatever you use). This saves easily 3-4 GB.
Most of the stuff you can safely (system wise) get rid of is inside your user(s) folder(s). Leave system alone.

[TuckerdogAVL]

Actually I was just asking those questions to learn what they do. Didn't mean to imply that any of these would help.

So, the answer to "what is mount or unmount?" is it "mounts or unmounts the volume." Okay. What does THAT mean? Can you take me through it? I launch Disk Utility. I see Mount or Unmount. What? How? Why? When? To the left are the two internal hard drives and the one external hard drive. When would I mount or unmount? Is this used if there is a problem with whether the drives show up on the left column? If I want to do.....what? Under what circumstances would I have to choose mount/unmount in disk utility.

What is a disk image? When would one want to create a new disk image? What is it used for?

Sorry, just trying to learn what some of this is and why they are there.

Regarding the languarges...Is DeLocalizer something already on the system? Or something I need to download from Versiontracker or elsewhere? And, can I safely remove all those printers as well?

[PBear]

Launch Disk Utility and click on the Help menu > Disk Utility Help. Search for "mount" in the upper right hand corner of the Help Viewer window. You should get a list of Help Topics and Support Articles related to the search word that will basically explain what the mount and unmount features are in Disk Utility. Also Working with Disk Images should be one of the listed Help Topics that will explain about Disk Images.

You will need to download DeLocalizer from versiontracker, macupdate or directly from it's home page.

As for the Printer drivers in Hard Drive/Library. I've read somewhere that you can safely delete the unused printers as they are easily installed from the original Install Disks if needed.
But as Guigara stated in thread #3 above "Harddrive/Library
and Harddrive/System --- these two folders: don't touch." He probably knows something I don't.
If I were you I'd start off with Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk before rummaging around in Hard Drive/Library.

[TuckerdogAVL]

thanks. that helps a lot. I'll do some studying and check out those downloads. :-)

[Kees Buijs]

Originally Posted by TuckerdogAVL

thanks. that helps a lot. I'll do some studying and check out those downloads. :-)

Mount makes a harddrive available to the OS. Unmount disconnects a harddrive from the OS (no longer availbale).

A disk image is a file containing the contents of a disk (also named a volume). It is simply a file containing everything that is on a partition of a harddrive (a harddrive contain multiple partitions, each representing a volume (or disk). A disk image is used to share volumes with other users (you can mount a disk image in os x and it will show up in the finder like a real volume).

RAID is a trick to combine multiple harddrive to one or more volumes it increase the volume space to a size larger as a harddrive size and/or increase the speed data is store / restored.


There is a terminal command which shows you the sizes of everything on the specified drive / volume / disk. It is DU and used in the terminal. You need to have supervisor access (use sudo optionally).


Good luck, Kees