My StartUp Disk is almost Full, How do I delete files?

Welcome To  Discussions McGoose!

"When I go to System Preferences I go to startup disk there,..."
That preference panel is only used to choose which system you wish to boot from.

What size is the Hard Drive, and how much space is available?
Do a Get Info on the Hard Drive icon, on the Desktop.

Capacity: ?
Available: ?
Used: ?

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 Mac 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".)

Rerun RP, until the only messages reported, are listed here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.3.x, authored by Michael Conniff.

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

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Just out of curiosity, have you emptied the trash on your dock? If not, context click (right click, or hold ctrl and click) on your trash can and select "Empty Trash".

If you already knew that, I don't mean to insult you. I've run into a lot of new users in my day that weren't aware that you have to empty the trash.

Good Luck.

</earnest>

Look at these links.

Where did my disk space go?
http://www.macfixitforums.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Forum38&Number=770243
Download & use WhatSize described in this link or Disk Inventory X @ http://www.derlien.com/

Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html

Amazing Disappearing Drive Space
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html

Increase HD Free Space
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/275191-how-easily-increase-hd-free-space-lap top.html

How to free up my disk space
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html


 Cheers, Tom 😉

You're Welcome McGoose,

"Is there somewhere I go to empty start up disk cache or something
like that?"

You will find suggestions, instructions, and links to informative documents, in My Previous Reply.

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