How to determine space utilization

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How to determine space utilization

My 2006 desktop iMac is reporting that the startup drive is almost full. I've cleared just about every photo and moved the majority of the documents to another drive. Still, only 9.71 GB of the 159 GB drive is available. That leaves the applications and the space reserved by Parelles for Windows. What's the best way to determine space utilization and start eliminating "stuff"? Can I safely delete all dmg files? How about the old Microsft programs? I may get the version of Microsoft Office that runs under OS X later this year. Are the old installations needed if I want to qualify as an upgrade? (Is that even considered an upgrade?) I do recall that windows leaves lots of temporary files on a hard drive during software upgrades, does apple do the same?

Lots of questions, I know.

I have purchased another external (2T) drive. I could make that the primary startup drive but I would be back in the same position if I don't properly understand what I can delete and what I need to keep. Oh-and should I continue using the startup disk as the primary hard drive, but move all applications to the new 2T drive? Is that a viable solution? Or, should applications remain on the primary drive?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Feb 12, 2013 9:54 AM

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Answer 1

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mende1

Level 10

93,538 points

Feb 12, 2013 9:59 AM in response to marianfromla

First, open  > About this Mac > Storage, so you can see what is taking up space of the hard disk.

You can delete all your DMGs if they are stored on your user folder. DMGs are often installation packages, so you can delete them without any problem. Also, if you aren't using old applications, you can uninstall them without any problem. Most of the apps are uninstalled just dragging them to the Trash, but some applications need an uninstaller to be uninstalled.

To install Office 2011 if you are running an older Office version, you can install Office 2011 without having an old Office version installed on your Mac. There aren't upgrade versions for Office for Mac > http://www.microsoft.com/mac

Your Mac stores the downloaded updates on a system folder, and you can delete them if you need space. However, if your hard disk gets more free space deleting other things, better.

On OS X, most of the apps just run being dragged to a folder, and you can use those applications without any problem. However, other apps (as Office) needs other files on your OS X volume, so you may have problems running it from an external disk. If you have enough space on the internal disk, run your applications from there

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