First, there is no such thing as "Other" on the drive. It is just a category catch-all for filetypes that aren't recognized in the Storage information provided through About This Mac.
Get Correct Storage Information
Do not use the information from the Storage section of the About This Mac dialog. Ignore the Storage information as it is typically wrong. To find out the correct information for any disk: Select a Desktop disk icon. Press Command-I to open the Get Info window and look at the topmost panel displayed. You will find the disk information displayed for Capacity, Available, and Used. If you have more than one disk/partition then repeat for each one on your Desktop.
The categories found in the Storage section of About This Mac is simply an arbitrary way of displaying files on your drive. There are no such categories actually on the drive.
Your drive is apparently overloaded with files that you need to move off to external storage.
How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive
- You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
- Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
- Also, see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
- What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?
- Files That Make Up the 'Other' Storage Category, and How to Remove Them
- Free up storage space on your Mac.
- See Where did my Disk Space go?.
- Be sure to Empty the Trash to recover the space.
- Replace the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
- Use OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.
You can get fast and reliable external storage at OWC or other dealers. OWC has excellent Mac-only products, and they have been great Apple supporters since their inception. I am always happy to recommend them.
