what's taking up all the space on my hard drive?

Question

what's taking up all the space on my hard drive?

I've run a programme called Grand Perspective to try to see where all the space on my hard drive has gone. Out of a capacity of 111GB there is only about 66GB used on stuff I can identify - iTunes & iPhoto libraries, documents, applications etc. Grand Perspective tells me the other 45GB is "miscellaneous used space". Can anyone tell me how I can find out what this might be, and whether I can release any of it, please? Thanks.

macbook mid-2007, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 13, 2010 3:32 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

R94N

Level 2

210 points

May 13, 2010 4:48 AM in response to Sarah Mulkerins

They could be system cache files, Safari web history and cookies, or that sort of stuff.

If you haven't done so in a while, try resetting Safari (or whatever browser you are using) - go to Safari -> Reset Safari and then choose what things you want to delete. Web history, input data and cookies can take up a lot of space if they're left to build up. Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

May 13, 2010 6:36 AM in response to R94N

thanks, that's freed up about 200Mb but I'm still puzzled as to what's taking up 40% of my hard drive ....

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Answer 3

GfulDedFan

Level 4

3,315 points

May 13, 2010 7:45 AM in response to Sarah Mulkerins

There are applications available to help you find out your disk usage.

There is free software [Disk Inventory X|http://www.derlien.com> but I'm not familiar with it...

or shareware [WhatSize|http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13006/whatsize] that I use and it works great.

You may be able to find others.

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Answer 4

R94N

Level 2

210 points

May 14, 2010 2:39 AM in response to GfulDedFan

Yes, there is a cool paid program called CleanMyMac which can locate certain temporary and large files which are sitting around wasting space. I think you can *find it in the downloads on the Apple website* - you can use the program to clean a certain amount of data before you have to get the paid version, but it's great - you can delete loads of things safely with it, even uninstalling programs safely too - you should check it out.

🙂

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Answer 5

May 15, 2010 7:36 AM in response to R94N

Yes, I think I will, thanks.

Eventually I found what was using the space - it was duplicates of all my iTunes & iPhoto libraries hiding in Users - it must have happened when I transferred the contents of my old iMac to my Macbook. Disk Inventory X and Grand perspective didn't identify the duplicate files but I followed the instructions from this website a Google search threw up http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/TigerMisc.html - although I'm using Leopard the instructions were good and I now have the space back.

Thanks everyone for your help.

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