Insufficient Disk Space

You can easily look in Finder and it can tell you how much space you have. Had you completed a profile we would be able to help more, without one we have no idea what version of OS X you use, your iMac information or anything.

If you are like many users what takes up the most space is media such as your iPhoto library, iTunes library or iMovie library. If that case the best bet is to move those libraries to an external HD. Apple explains how in:

iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD

iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD

iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD

How much available disk space do you have, according to the Finder?

Quick fix How To Quickly Free Up Hard Drive Space on Mac OS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO-mlLApEuk

=====================

Empty the trash in the Dock as well as iPhoto’s trash!

Open up your application folder & go through all your apps. Trash all the apps you no longer want and/or use.

An easier way to do this is to open the Application folder in list view & press the Command+j keys.

In the the dialog that appears, click the "This Window Only" button & the "Calculate All Sizes" check box.

Wait a bit until your file & folder sizes have all been calculated, then click the "Size" column to sort your apps from the fattest to the most anorexic.

Get rid of all your photo files you don't want and/or need. Same goes for those pics off the websites you downloaded (gifs, jpegs, etc.). Or transfer/move them all to a photo/movie storage site like ImageShack and Photobucket, 2 of the most popular FREE storage sites.

Get rid of all your video & music files you no longer view and/or listen too. Especially, if you already have the actual CD/DVDs or you can later redownload from a website. Or transfer them all to a FREE video/movies and/or music storage site.

Use Spotlight to make sure you got rid of everything. You can even trash directly from Spotlight! Better yet, download this FREE software called Find File. This app puts Spotlight to shame (works w/Mountain Lion).

Drag what you don't want and/or need to the trash. Better yet, download this neat little shareware app *demo* called AppZapper. It basically does all the work for you by not only trashing the apps but the apps preference files, caches & all its associated files.

Another software that does the above is AppDelete. Best of all this software is free!

Burn what you want and/or need onto CDs or DVDs. Not everyone has the luxury of purchasing an external HD and/or the system requirements for iCloud to store their "stuff.”

Dropbox is a free storage utility to check out.

You can check with your ISP to see if they offer *free* storage space. Most if not all do now-a-days. There are thousands if not millions of *free* storage facilities on the web also. Use your favorite search engine to search them out as they come in different storage sizes to fit your needs & wants.

Check for duplicate fonts.

Applications>Font Book

Select “All Fonts”

If you see any “black dots” next to any fonts this mean you have duplicates and/or multiple versions of these fonts.

To clean this up, select a “black dotted” font or the Apple + *click* to select multiple dotted fonts;

Edit>Resolve>Duplicates.

What the above does is turns off the duplicates & multiple version fonts. Not delete them.

More than likely the “extras” were installed by other programs and/or other users.

Clear out font caches

Use FontNuke. It does all the work for you. And, best of all it’s *FREE*.

Printer Drivers

Get rid of all the printer drivers you don’t need & use except the ones for your *current* printer(s)/scanner(s).

HD>Library>Printers Folder

If you accidently threw something out that you needed for your printer/scanner it can be easily obtained from the manufacturer’s website and/or from the CD that came w/the printer/scanner.

Garage Band

Has about 1GB of loops stored. Get rid of some some them. You surely don’t use, like and/or need them all.

HD>Library>Audio/Apple Loops>Apple>Apple Loops For GarageBand

Or just get rid of the Garage Band app altogether if you don’t use it.

Get rid of extra languages

Strip your computer down to your “native” tongue.

You can do this with a *FREE* utility called Monolingual. Another app that apparently does all the work for you. I’ve never used it. However, a lot of users here swear by & recommend it highly.

However, there is a warning for *native English speakers*. Make sure you keep BOTH English and English (United States).

Other Resources:

HD Space Checkers:

Disk Inventory X (FREE)

WhatSize (SHAREWARE)

OmniDiskSweeper (FREE)

GrandPerspective (FREE - donation)

Mac Performance Guide

Slimming your hard drive

Rule of thumb: You should never let your hard drive get to where you have only 10-15% of space left.

First, empty the Trash if you haven't already done so. Then reboot. That will temporarily free up some space.

According to Apple documentation, you need at least 9 GB of available space on the startup volume (as shown in the Finder Info window) for normal operation. You also need enough space left over to allow for growth of your data. There is little or no performance advantage to having more available space than the minimum Apple recommends. Available storage space that you'll never use is wasted space.

To locate large files, you can use Spotlight as described here. That method may not find large folders that contain a lot of small files.

You can also use a tool such as OmniDiskSweeper (ODS) to explore your volume and find out what's taking up the space. You can delete files with it, but don't do that unless you're sure that you know what you're deleting and that all data is safely backed up. That means you have multiple backups, not just one.

Proceed further only if the problem hasn't been solved.

ODS can't see the whole filesystem when you run it just by double-clicking; it only sees files that you have permission to read. To see everything, you have to run it as root.

Back up all data now.

Install ODS in the Applications folder as usual. Quit it if it's running.

Triple-click the line of text below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.

The application window will open, eventually showing all files in all folders. It may take some minutes for ODS to list all the files.

I don't recommend that you make a habit of doing this. Don't delete anything while running ODS as root. If something needs to be deleted, make sure you know what it is and how it got there, and then delete it by other, safer, means.

When you're done with ODS, quit it and also quit Terminal.