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Disk cleanup advice for an inexperienced user

Firstly, I must confess that I am a Windows user but with the good intention in helping out a very inexperienced user with their Macbook air. Their 60Gb hard disk has completely filled up (100mb left!) and I need to free up about 5Gb to load another application for them.


My first consideration was to copy all the folders (except application) onto an external hard drive. Then create a Smart folder to highlight the largest files for deletion. I have noticed that there is a large file with an extension of .NDIF; can this be safely deleted? Any other advice in cleaning up the hard drive would be appreciated – maybe there are some temporary files that should be deleted? (BTW, Trash is empty). Do you think there is a better method to clean up the disk space than I have proposed?


Finally once I have sorted this out, should I be configuring Time Machine to backup the Macbook drive?


Thanks,


Phil

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Nov 25, 2012 1:54 AM

Reply
8 replies

Nov 25, 2012 2:41 AM in response to AnaMusic

What a really helpful reply. That video you mentioned is exactly what I wanted.


Just one final question on .NDIF file. This is a large file which I intend to copy it to an external hard disk; is there any problem in deleting it from the macbook. I am bit cautious as I am not use to dealing with this file type and I don't want to mess up the mac by my ignorance.


Thanks very much,


Phil

Nov 25, 2012 2:41 PM in response to PhilMid

PhilMid wrote:


My first consideration was to copy all the folders (except application) onto an external hard drive.


You can only move the contents of the Users folders of Music, Pictures, Movies, Documents etc., not the folders themselves or anything else as these need to remain.


Do not move any folders unless they are inside these above folders and user generated, OS X needs the users folders mentioned above to remain, also Applications and any other folders higher in the hierarchy like System and Library.


You should choose movies inside the Movie folder as these are usually large and moving just a few free's up a lot of space in a hurry.


Another place is iTunes subscriptions, these tend ot get out of bounds and fill up a drive if too many are subscribed to.


Most commonly used backup methods

Disk cleanup advice for an inexperienced user

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