My iMac's hard drive keeps filling up.

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Level 1

14 points

My iMac's hard drive keeps filling up.

My iMac's hard drive keeps filling up. It has 320GB but only 1.37GB free! Other than Photos (3.43GB) and Songs (12.34GB), I have hardly anything installed on it. I recently got the message "Disc almost full...". Everytime I delete something (and I've delete a lot of things now) the free space relentlessly depletes. I have tried searching for files or programs that might be taking up a lot of space but can't find anything unusual or big enough to make a difference. I saw another comment from someone saying it was Mail failed downloads or something like that and suggested changing Finder preferences to "Other" to find the hidden files. But after doing this, I cannot find anything that looks bad. Look at the screenshot below, which shows what's taking up the disc space. How can the "Other" possibly be taking up 297.71GB when there's hardly anything on my mac that's bigger than 1GB!?!? Please help....

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Feb 27, 2013 11:43 AM

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Answer 1

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MichelPM

Level 10

80,968 points

Feb 27, 2013 12:38 PM in response to laddersrich

Do you own and backup any iDevices?

Anything else you have on this drive?

Any other places you store personal data?

You have any images or photos anywhere else?

You have a lot of documents?

Have you emptied OS X Trash icon recently.

iPhoto has its own trash the needs emptying.

Have you emptied the trash in Apple's Mail app?

Other things you can do to gain space.

Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive older emails you want to save.

Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.

Again, archive or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.

Uninstall apps that you no longer use. If the app has a dedicated uninstaller, use it to completely uninstall the app. If the app has no uninstaller, then just drag it to the OS X Trash icon and empty the Trash.

Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.

When you install and launch it, let it do its thing initially, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run all of the processes in the tabs. Let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.

Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.

If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects?

Good Luck!

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Answer 2

laddersrich Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 27, 2013 1:14 PM in response to MichelPM

I have an iPhone, which gets backed up on iTunes, and I have gone through deleting everything I don't need/want backed up. I only use iPhoto for pictures, and always make sure the trash is emptied. The main trash can is lso emptied regularly. I never use the Apple Mail app, but have just checked it and it's empty. I have not created or saved many documents at all. However, after entering the word "document" in Finder, it comes up with 14,747 items! I don't know what 99% of these are and have no idea which ones are safe to delete. Also, only 183 of the files are larger than 100KB, so even if I deleted most/all of these items, it wouldn't make a dent in the used disc space. I have looked at my HD, and the Users folder contains 302.74GB!!! Unfortunately when I open the next folder, there are 10 folders (including Documents, Music, Pictures, etc) totalling about 40GB. No idea where the other 260GB comes from!?!?!?! Am I looking in the wrong place? I will try OnyX and see if that helps....

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Answer 3

laddersrich Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 27, 2013 1:58 PM in response to laddersrich

OnyX has helped remove about 0.2GB, which is better than nothing I suppose. I found an app called OmniDiscSweeper, which is like Finder but much easier to find massive files/programs. I found that steam.log was 257GB!!! No idea why it is so big!?! Before I delete Steam, can anybody tell me why this was causing a problem and more importantly if it is safe to delete - as I don't use it for anything (I don't think). I recommend OmniDiscSweeper to anyone having this problem. It took 30 seconds to find what was so big, it should've already been obvious what/where it was - even though it wasn't.

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Answer 4

laddersrich Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 27, 2013 2:16 PM in response to laddersrich

Steam IS the problem everybody! I saw on their blog that a lot of people were noticing the .log file growing uncontrollably. After deleting it, I now have an excessive amount of disc space! So happy I finally found and solved the problem. 😀

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Answer 5

iCrizzo

Level 3

840 points

Feb 27, 2013 2:49 PM in response to laddersrich

How many apps do you have backed-up to your computer via iTunes? I have about 90GBs of apps from doing back-ups via iTunes. Might want to check that and see if that helps save some space.

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