How much disk space does a new user account take up?

If you are almost out of space on your laptop, you should definitely get an external hard drive-ideally, OS X needs 10-15% free disk space to operate.

I would suggest leaving 20% free, then creating an account for your wife.

Good luck!

Yes, sorry.
A new user takes up about 24KB on my computer, but YMMV.

Good luck!

Hi Brett!

It would depend on the amount of data, that your wife will put in the account.

My one and only user account is 323.7 MB, and I do not store any music, or photos on the system.
What size is the user account you are now utilizing?

Joshz posted a valid point.
May I ask what size the Hard Drive is, and how much space is available?

Insufficient available space, can cause performance issues, system corruption, and possible loss of data.

Depending on Mac system usage habits, it is a general recommendation, to keep 10% to as much as 20%, of the Total capacity, available at all times.

Review the suggestions, in the documents that I have linked to below.

Authored by Dr Smoke:
Problems From Insufficient RAM And Free Hard Disk Space
Freeing Space On Your Mac OS X Startup Disk

Mac OS X 10.3/10.4: System Maintenance, authored by Gulliver
Maintaining Mac OS X, authored by Dr Smoke

Is the Mac shutdown overnight, or does it run 24/7?
Have you ever run any routine Maintenance procedures?
If you turn the PowerBook off nightly, the Background Maintenance Tasks, are never run.

These can also be run, using a Third-Party utility, or manually using Terminal, to run the CRON Commands.
I use MacJanitor, when necessary.

INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:

sudo periodic daily

Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
This will execute the daily script that is sheduled to run every night.
When completed, repeat this procedure, but change the command to:

sudo periodic weekly

This one rebuilds a database or two, and usually takes somewhat longer to complete. It is scheduled to run once a week.
Repeat again, with command:

sudo periodic monthly

Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.

Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.

TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)

When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".

ali b

joshz wrote:
A new user takes up about 24KB on my computer, but YMMV.

Don't know where you get that from, Josh. A new users home folder on 10.4.11 should take 84KB. Of course, you are listed as being still on 10.4.10, so maybe …

Interestingly, this has increased quite a bit in 10.5, to 752K! Still not a huge amount of course.

The 24 KB is before login.
You should expect to add at least 20MB to that when you open programs, as they create preference files when they are run.

alib's advice, however, is a very good overview of hard disk space on macs.

Good luck!

After running a few applications such as Safari and Appleworks, my guest account (it doesn't get used that much so there are no documents, music or pictures) takes up 5.3MB.