How much hard drive space to leave free?

Hello, my Mac internal hard drive is 75 GB. I regularly use memory-greedy apps such as Photoshop and Illustrator to create and edit large graphic files. Also, I use Adobe Creative Suite 2 to design publications and will download CS4 very soon.

I use an external hard drive of 150GB to create and store all my working files, photos and music.

I've been told that I need to leave a certain percentage of free space on my internal hard drive for it to process optimally, but I cannot recall what that amount is. Is there a rule of thumb for this?

Right now there is only 19.7 GB free on my hard drive. Since I create and store all my files externally, I don't know what keeps eating up my internal hard drive space. Could it be application updates and upgrades?

Thanks.
KRS

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Feb 3, 2009 8:37 AM

Posted on Feb 3, 2009 11:07 AM

Your Mac needs adequate hard drive space to operate normally. How full can a drive be before it's too full? There is no hard and fast rule that says “X” amount or “%” of free drive space is needed. A low amount of RAM requires more drive space for Virtual Memory’s swap files.

Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space are discussed in this link
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html

Here’s some general guidelines for minimum hard drive free space:
1. As a general rule, your available space should be 5GB as an absolute minimum as it generally requires that much free space to perform an Archive and Install of Mac OS X and still preserve some free space for VM swap files.
2. Some say that your hard drive should have at least 5% of it's capacity available for use. Still others say 10% to 15%. If you routinely process complex graphics and videos, even more space is required.

With your 19.7GB of free space, you should be OK. Usually it's best to not state a percentage, but state an amount of free space. There's a big difference in having 10% free space (20GB) on a 200GB hard drive compared 10% (4GB) to a 40GB hard drive.

Look at these links about freeing up more space.

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 😉

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