Could somebody please shed some light on "Inactive Memory," and why it's apparently taking up so much of my iMac's disk space? Here's what it looks like:
Also, I'm still getting this "Startup Disk is almost full" message, even after I installed 2 brand-new chips of RAM (now 8G)
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 24", early '09, 8G RAM, 2.93 Intel
Hello, pics not showing here, you have to use the little Camera icon in a reply to upload them... drag & drop will look like they are there until you hit Send Reply/Post.
Startup Disk full is a whole other issue than RAM.
Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities...
How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
Thank you for the reply. I posted the info in a new discussion here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4155426
If that link doesn't show up, here's what it says in the posting:
Hey there - if anybody can help, I would sure appreciate it. Our iMac just keeps getting slower and slower, even after I just upgraded the RAM (now it has 8 GB installed).
I just went to the Apple Store, and they told me that I need an external hard drive for all of our movies and photos (but it doesn't seem like we have that many movies and photos. I'm also getting a "Startup Disk" full message frequently. I would appreciate any ideas anybdoy has. It's hard to upload photos, so I'll try to type what I see:
Free: 4.3 GB
Wired: 790 MB
Active: 2.4 GB
Inactive: 461 MB
Used: 3.6 GB
space utilized: 635 GB
space free: 4.1 GB
There's a pie chart, and the "space free" is just a sliver.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 24", early '09, 8G RAM, 2.93 Intel
You are confusing memory (RAM) with free space on the hard drive.
You have plenty of RAM, but not nearly enough free space on your hard drive to run Lion. You need at least 25-30GB minimum for your Mac not to seize up, preferable several times that amount.
The advice you received from the Apple Store was correct. External hard drives are not expensive anymore.
just got new RAM, still slow, "Inactive Memory" and "Startup Disk" qq
