I received a message saying "Startup Disk" is almost full. So, the logical thing was to start deleting things to free it up. I wanted to check to see how much space I have left on my HD and for some reason I cannot locate my HD. I searched in Finder and it wasn't there. I did a search in Spotlight for the Startup Disk and got this message:
The application "Startup Disk" cannot be launched. -10828.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
I might be stating something you are already aware of... but your "startup disk" is just the physical drive/partition your computer starts the OS from. Chances are it is labeled "Macintosh HD" and is located on your Desktop. By default, all drives/partitions that are mounted are displayed on the desktop, with the Startup Disk being on top. To check the available space on this drive, just double-click its icon, and look at the bottom of the finder window that opens. It should say "X.XX GB Available".
As a rule of thumb, I always leave about 5-10% of the disk clean. So if you have a 100 GB drive, you should have about 5-10 GB free for the computer to use for virtual memory/system cache. Once you start encroaching upon this sacred space, you have two options - 1) start erasing things to free up space or 2) add another hard drive for extra storage.
I might be stating something you are already aware of... but your "startup disk" is just the physical drive/partition your computer starts the OS from. Chances are it is labeled "Macintosh HD" and is located on your Desktop. By default, all drives/partitions that are mounted are displayed on the desktop, with the Startup Disk being on top. To check the available space on this drive, just double-click its icon, and look at the bottom of the finder window that opens. It should say "X.XX GB Available".
As a rule of thumb, I always leave about 5-10% of the disk clean. So if you have a 100 GB drive, you should have about 5-10 GB free for the computer to use for virtual memory/system cache. Once you start encroaching upon this sacred space, you have two options - 1) start erasing things to free up space or 2) add another hard drive for extra storage.
In the Finder, choose Preferences from the Finder menu. In there, you will have an option to show hard drives on the desktop. Make sure that option is checked.
« By default, all drives/partitions that are mounted are displayed on the desktop, with the Startup Disk being on top. »
______________
While we are touching the subject of the startup disc showing up on top of the others on the desktop, I am curious to know why that feature seems to have disappeared since I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard. Now, the icons of the discs remain exactly where they were when I initiate a restart, even if I use a different disc to startup. I found it quite useful, on occasions, to instantly see which disc was the one running the show just by glancing at the desktop.
Would someone know why that useful feature would have been removed from Leopard or, better still, how to restore it ?