Start up disk almost full.

[Reality]

I just got this message today. It said my start up disk was almost full and I should delete some files. Well guys, what your suggestions? What should be some of the first stuff to go? Or maybe I be better looking into external Hard Drives.

[scruffy]

Printer drivers for printers you don't have might be a good place to start. Other than that, I really can't think of much, because I'm not you...

[perfessor101]

Since we have no idea what is on your startup drive or how big it is in the first place, this is almost an impossible question to answer. Stripping out unused printer drivers has already been suggested. Add t that, running Monolingual and ditching any unneeded language localization files will yield you a net gain of a few, very few, MegaBytes, but certainly not not GigaBytes.

Run Cocktail or Onyx to clean up the log files, archived logs, and cache files and you will probably gain a whole lot more disk space than deleting unneeded language localization files and print drivers. Just remember this is a temporary gain and you will have to repeat this step periodically to stay ahead of the accumulation.

WhatSize is a handy freeware utility that will scan all your visible and invisible files and folders and rank them by size so you at least know where your disk space is going. Be careful with any utility of this type because it will let you delete almost any file on the system and used injudiciously can quickly render OS X inoperative and unrecoverable.

Among the user's files, music, photo, and video files can eat MegaBytes of disk space in nothing flat. Then your only choice is which are you willing to delete. Just remember you can delete a song in iTunes and unless you specify that you also want the file deleted it is still taking up the same amount of disk space.

Warning: any time the free space on your hard drive falls below 15% there is a greatly increased risk of irreparable damage to your file system occurring, so you probably need to clean out a lot more disk space than you think you do to get below the 15% free space level. It may be time for you to consider:

1. Replacing your hard drive with a substantially larger one
2. Adding a second internal hard drive to your system if possible
3. Adding an external firewire hard drive to your system
4. all of the above

Finally the problem may be the file system is already damaged and yielding a false report. Boot from the install CD or another bootable volume and run Disk Utility > Repair Disk and see if any problems are detected. If problems are found and repaired, rerun Disk Utility until no more errors are found or Disk Utility reports irreparable errors. If that happens try TechTool Pro 4 or Diskwarrior 3.

Good Luck!

[Reality]

Ah ok I see. Sorry for the lack of info there guys. I'm pretty new to computer tech and such but heh, I'm learning. Ok just to give some extra info, in case any other suggestions can be made.

The HardDrive is only 80GB (Not very large at all) and I do have lots of movies and digital pictures so I got some blank CDs today and I'll go through them all and burn what I want to keep and trash the rest.

After I'm finished with that I'll do a Disk Utility scan (haven't done it yet this week.) I'll also look into those apps you listed Perfessor. I never cleaned out any type of logs or cache files before so I'd imagine I have a whole lot on here. Thanks guys for your help.

PS. I think I'll look on ebay for some external Hard Drives. Can anybody recommend a good brand?

[perfessor101]

Originally Posted by Reality

The HardDrive is only 80GB (Not very large at all) and I do have lots of movies and digital pictures

I never cleaned out any type of logs or cache files before so I'd imagine I have a whole lot on here.

PS. I think I'll look on ebay for some external Hard Drives. Can anybody recommend a good brand?

Movies! Bet money that is where most of your disk space has gone. The files for a one hour iDVD project can easily eat up 30 GB (I have a couple that will prove that.) Hope you have a SuperDrive and some blank DVD-Rs, you are going to need the storage space.

The system automatically rotates and archives the log files every night around 3:00 to 5:00 A.M. if your computer is on and if the system is not asleep! The cache files are also supposed to be self limiting, but sometimes they do seem to accumulate.

I would be leery of firewire drives purchased on eBay. You may be buying another user's problem without knowing it. Among the brands with a good reputation for supporting Macs are LaCie, Granite Digital, Other World Computing, and Maxtor. There are obviously other brands on the market but there have been compatibility issues with OS X from time to time and these four brands have been quick to fix any compatibility problems that have arisen. Some PC centric brands basically said, "So what?" A good place to check compatibility issues is the user reports database at XLR8YourMac.

Remember this when looking for an external hard drive.

• Firewire drives are bootable with OS X
• USB drives are not bootable with OS X.
• You want a bootable external drive.
• Firewire 800 devices will work on a Firewire 400 bus with a nine pin to six pin connector cable but only at the slower speed.
• Always buy more capacity than you think you will ever need. Later on you will wonder why you didn't buy more
• When you buy a Firewire drive, the unique elements are the case, power supply, and firewire bridge chip. It is the firewire bridge chip and its firmware that dictates OS X compatibility. All the manufacturers use the same actual drive mechanisms from Hitachi/IBM, Seagate, Maxtor, or Western Digital.

[Reality]

Hey a big thank you for all your help Perfessor. It's very appreciated. I had little idea just how much space a few movies would take up ect.

[Arden]

Another part of it is how long your computer has been on consecutively. If your uptime gets to be very long, and especially if you open and close lots of programs, you will build massive amounts of swap files. I've looked at my swap files and found them up to 2 GB... and my internal drive is 12.7 GB, much bigger than yours.

Restarting (or at least logging out) should cure this.

[Randman]

Running cron jobs via something like Cocktail should help with that Arden. And it shouldn't be as much of a problem either, if ram is sufficient.
For video, I'd recommend an external HD, especially as prices are dropping every day.
I prefer Delocalizer over Monolingual.
If you don't need Classic, you could delete that, or move it to the external. iDVD and Garageband are other space hogs. Loops and themes can be moved over to an external or burnt to a DVD to help save some space as well.