I keep getting a warning that my start up disk is full and I need to delete files. What is a start up disk and how do I delete files from it?
MacBook Air, iOS 6.1.4
I ran the app and here is what it said:
System cleaner - 93
Logs cleaner - 27
App Potimizer - 1
Unused langueages - 1416
If I want to clean it - then it wants to charge me for the app. Is there a way around this?
I had heard of the app many times, but had never tried it until now to see how it works. It's kind of clumsy in that it shows folder sizes first. Then you have to keep drilling down by clicking on subfolder after subfolder to see what file is taking up the most space.
I also wouldn't trust any utility to delete files for me. Far too often they remove things they shouldn't. Removing all foreign languages you don't need can clear up about a half gig of space. The free utility Monolingual can do that. I have a small web page written up on how to use it.
It's much more important to find out what file, or files are taking up so much room. Going back to the hard drive, right click on it again for the Get Info dialogue. What is the total Capacity of the drive?
Capacity is 120.47 GB now. 4.24 is available. I will check out monolingual.
When I removed iphoto and imovies it only freed up about 3 more GB of space.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by having "removed" those two? Did you move their libraries?
Did you check your Home Folder (little house icon) > Movies to see how much space that is taking up? Control click on the Movies folder and choose "get info" - it'll tell you how many GB are stored in there. Do the same with your Pictures folder.
By removing, I mean that I copied the app from the hard drive onto an external hard drive, then drug the app from the hard drive to the trash can. I don't know about the library. It all seems to be working the same way from the external hard drive. The iMovies said it is taking up 1.47 GB and the iPhoto is taking up 1.58 GB.
A 120 GB drive is one heck of a small drive. Did you, or someone else partition a larger drive into smaller segments. By the time you get the OS on there and a fair number of third party apps, that doesn't leave a whole lot of free space to work with.
No, not that I know of. Maybe I should do some checking....
Removing the application itself does not save a lot of space. If you have quite a few movies stored on your hard drive (or pictures), that is what takes up a lot of space. And those are stored in the Libraries.
Have you checked the sizes of the Movies and Pictures folder in my previous post?
Here is info on how to move the Libraries:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506
You were right! The iphoto library has 65 GB on it! That is what was taking up so much memory. On my way to get a new external hard drive now so I can keep iPhoto on it. Thanks for your help.
You're welcome; FWIW, you should always maintain a minimum of 10 - 15 GB of empty space on your hard drive for the OS to perform properly (more is better).
Hi Kurt Lang, Babowa: I have the same saving files problem and getting the no available space message. But my HD has 65 GB free (more than half). What can be going wrong? Thanks for your help.
A conflicting message like that indicates the drive's free space data is corrupt. It thinks the drive is full when it isn't.
Before doing anything else, backup the entire drive to an external device, or other partition. Disk Utility can clone the drive, or you can use the shareware utilities SuperDuper!, or Carbon Copy Cloner. Make sure the drive you're cloning your startup drive to is correctly formatted for the Mac. That means it has a GUID partition table, and the drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended. You want to be able to boot to it. GUID is required for that.
Once the drive has been backed up, restart and hold down the Option key. This is to make sure you can boot to the clone. Choose it from the list of bootable drives the Mac shows and startup to it. If the drive you cloned isn't a choice, it doesn't have a GUID partition table and you'll have to start over.
If you did boot to the clone, the simplest fix really is to launch Disk Utility and erase the main drive. Then clone the cloned drive back. Erasing will clear all file table and free reported space errors.
Thanks Kurt. I'll give it a try.
Just for as a FYI for other people. Instead of doing it manually by going through each folder, you can also use Disk Inventory X to find out where are the large unused files. You can read more on how to do this on Device Garage's blog:
http://www.devicegarage.net/diy-repair-blog/apple-mac-start-up-disk-almost-full
my HD says i have 338 GB available, but i appear to be cursed by the spinning beach ball and everything seems to take forever to load. Do i have enough memory/space?
Start-up disk full????
