How do I reduce used space on my internal high drive?

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Level 1

9 points

How do I reduce used space on my internal high drive?

I am very concerned. I have been watching the available space on Mac HD internal hard drive. I have one external drive that Time Machine uses which is 931.39GB and also one that I am using for external storage [Format: Mac OS extended (Journaled) 372.29 GB not used with my time machine. I have been transferring high volume files over to my external storage drive, thinking that the available numbers for my Mac HD would go up, BUT they are, in fact, going down. What is going on? How can I help my internal HD before it runs out of space? I thought my music files were the highest volume files, so concentrated on moving them. I have clicked on my files in Finder to see what info it would give me re space that each folder/app uses, but I only see how many GB's are left. Don't know how to figure out what space each is taking. The only thing I could find was that when I opened iPhoto and clicked on Events, it did show me how much space it was using. Why can't I find out what other apps or files use?

iMAC, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Aug 18, 2012 12:34 PM

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Answer 1

babowa

Level 9

78,103 points

Aug 18, 2012 12:47 PM in response to designer_02

After moving over your large files, such as your iTunes library, did you delete them from your internal hard drive (and empty the trash)? Copying things from one drive to another does just that: it copies them, it does not delete them from the source automatically.

Now, did you follow these steps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

If you follow those directions, you can point your iTunes to the external library and then safely delete the same thing from your internal (don't forget to empty the trash).

And, one way to find out what is using how much space, there is this:

http://whatsizemac.com/

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Answer 2

designer_02 Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 18, 2012 1:42 PM in response to babowa

Figured out how to see what space each file, etc. was using. Yes, I did delete them from the internal HD. Did not empty trash, however. Didn't think of that.

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