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Trying to free up some space. I am using MacMail. i have several 'mailboxes', each with lots of emails, and am attempting to move to my external hard drive. i can move one email at a time; but for the life of me after searching and trying, i cannot move MULTIPLE emails at the same time to the external hard drive. if i highlight them, it only moves one. Please help! Thanks, Donna
macOS Sierra 10.12.6
MacBook Air 11″, macOS 10.12
Sounds like maybe the last one, but 4 suggestions…
Have you emptied the trash lately?
Look for iOS backups…
/Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
OmniDiskSweeper shows you the files on your drive, largest to smallest, and lets you quickly Trash or open them.
https://www.omnigroup.com/more/
Purging local backups
Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.
Start Terminal from spotlight.
At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates.
Hit enter.
Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.
Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.
Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.
Hit enter.
Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required
http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html
Sounds like maybe the last one, but 4 suggestions…
Have you emptied the trash lately?
Look for iOS backups…
/Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
OmniDiskSweeper shows you the files on your drive, largest to smallest, and lets you quickly Trash or open them.
https://www.omnigroup.com/more/
Purging local backups
Please note that although this doesn't affect your remote backup from Time Machine, this will get rid of the redundancy (at least until the next Time Machine backup) that a local backup disk will provide. If you need such redundancy or are worried about the recovery of your data then you would be best served to let macOS determine when to purge these files.
Start Terminal from spotlight.
At the terminal type tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates.
Hit enter.
Here, you'll now see a list of all of the locally stored Time Machine backup snapshots stored on your disk.
Next you can remove the snapshots based on their date. I prefer to delete them one at at time. Once my "System" disk usage is at an acceptable level, I stop deleting but you can delete all of them if you want to reclaim all of the disk space.
Back at the terminal, type tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS , where will be one of the dates from your backup. This will be in the form of xxx-yy-zz-abcdef. Try to start with the oldest snapshot.
Hit enter.
Repeat for as many snapshot dates as required
http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2018/03/27/cleaning-up-time-machine-local-snapshots.html
part 2
--OmniDiskSweeper: i deleted a few, but mostly i don't know what most of this is, so i don't feel comfortable deleting it. --It's s
trange that System shows only 7.6GB ... mostly it's 'me-donna' that has 207.2GB
continued
you aren't going to believe this ... or maybe you will ... :)
i called Apple, after talking through my problem, she had me go to Mail >Window>Connection Doctor, and we uncheck the box at the bottom - 'Log Connection Activity' ... then to "Show Logs' .. there was a lot of stuff and we moved it to the Trash. (she said it doesn't need to be checked and uses a lot of space.)
now .... check this out !!!
i have 173GB available space ... System went from 180GB to 27GB !!!!
i am holding my breath, in case it reverts back ... but for now, i'm happy.
i thought you'd like to know in case this might help someone else... it hardly seems possible that one little check mark in Mail could do so much damage.
i will still get another external to repair my Passport, and have on hand for the next disaster (there always is).
but i want you to know how appreciative i am of your time, efforts, and especially patience. As i said, i learned a lot from you... things that will no doubt help me in the future (i took notes).
If you celebrate Thanksgiving, i wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and lots of good/happy things going forward.
Maybe i'll see you again on this forum !
Donna
Hi BDAqua, thank for your thoughts. CMD+a did select all files, but the Right Click brought up copy to: ... and every mailbox was listed, .. but my External Hard Drive was not listed :(
then, i tried just dragging 4 files ... only one was moved to the External ... and the other 3 disappeared .. gone... not in Trash. Any ideas on that ?
i appreciate your time and help
i am making things worse :(
Donna
Is this for backup or archival purposes or are you simply doing it to get free Space?
20 years of eMail on my Mac takes up only10.58 GB of space, it's generally easier to find a couple of Movies or Installers that'll clear more space than my 24,000 eNails take up.
How much Free S[ace on your drive now & how big is it?
Hi again!
Good to know emails don't take up that much, it shows Mail is using 2.8GB.
I am trying to free up space. i ONLY have 5.27 GB available of 249.78 GB. I know that's not good! that is this morning... last night i had 15GB, and i have not added anything to my computer! I have spent the last week going through and trashing stuff... and now this!
Also, a couple weeks ago i moved 25GB of photos to the External; so i felt i was ok... a few days later... my 'disk is almost full' note. Again, i hadn't added anything. i worked with one Apple tech which showed me ways to free space, and i've done that ... but it seems i'm just digging a whole; and i dont' understand why. i might also mention that my 'system' is using 160GB ... a week ago it was using 140GB. i don't understand what is going on :(
Another Apple tech i talked with was useless, and eventually hung up on me because i think he didn't know what to do :(
obviously i am spending a lot of time on this, and frustrated.
Does any of the above make any sense to you ?
thanks again !
my screenshots are using up all of my characters here :(
Part 1
Gosh, you're getting me out of my comfort zone :) But i'll try ..
--Yes, i've been emptying my Trash everytime i put something in there ...over-kill :)
--IOS backups??? sorry...where do i find or type in "/Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup" ?
continued
my screenshots are taking up too much space here .. Part 1
Gosh, you're getting me out of my comfort zone :) But i'll try ..
--Yes, i've been emptying my Trash everytime i put something in there ...over-kill :)
--IOS backups??? sorry...where do i find or type in "/Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup" ?
continued
my post is too large.. Part 1
Gosh, you're getting me out of my comfort zone :) But i'll try ..
--Yes, i've been emptying my Trash everytime i put something in there ...over-kill :)
--IOS backups??? sorry...where do i find or type in "/Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup" ?
You're doing good so far... and what good would impatience be to either of us!? :)
In your last screenshot click on donnapieracini to expand it, keep expanding right to say downloads & Documents folders.
That's so the EU can't sue me for $10,000,000 dollars if you request all the info you have on our site & I somehow fail to find everything... only thing is your posts & cookies to tell you what topics you've vistited or not.
Likely they wouldn't/couldn't, but...
You decide, you'd have to sign up to contact me via the board or PMs or eMail.
Have a DRs appointment in a bit that might take up to 8-10 hours.
ok, would like to continue when you return
in the meantime, i'll do something else ...that doesn't include the Mac :)
please send an email when you can 'work' on this again
hope your Dr appointment goes well
sorry to hear that; we have to be thankful for small favors, that you were close to home :)
i didn't check my mail last night; but i am here now.
in addition to my other problems, my External crashed yesterday :( macOS can’t repair the disk ‘My Passport for Mac”
you can still open or copy files on the disk, but you cannot save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can. i had a copy of it, so i'm ok there for now, but will need to backup and reformat.
--i am thinking the most important task now, is to decrease the size of my 'System' .. it doesn't really help that much to trash 2GB here and there, if the System just keeps growing. ...just my thinking.
--but i am here and willing to try anything you can suggest
thanks, Donna
Do you have a backup right now?
See if you can get this file with so little free space...
Find Any File...
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.php
Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.
Search for...
Name>Ends in> .log
i got the app, and a pop up window ..
where i can 'find items ... on Mac HD, or other options from a drop down box.
Name ...ends with .. ... .log
and i got a whole bunch of stuff all log files
--i didn't see where i can Opt key .. find to find all ???
---i can move all my photos, 16GB, to my external hard drive, if that would help give us some room to 'fix this' ????
--i opened up 'all my files' from Finder again .... now there are about 12 copies of each file.... what is going on ???? my gosh !
i feel like i am in the Twilight Zone and some alien has attacked my mac :)
moving mac mail to external hard drive
