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Start-up disk full????

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

Posted on Aug 23, 2013 7:46 AM

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36 replies

May 6, 2017 7:55 PM in response to Rainyday31

You are in the major danger zone. There is so little room left, the OS can't even operate correctly. Losing data is a real possibility.


Stop using the Mac. Get an external hard drive that can be connected to your Mac. Generally, a USB drive is the safest choice since any Mac built in at least the last 8 years has such a port and can boot from it. If this is a very new MacBook with the USB-C port, you'll also likely need to purchase a separate USB-C to USB 2 (or 3) cable.


Plug in the new drive to the Mac and it's power cable. Turn the Mac on and immediately hold down the Command+Option+R keys to boot into Internet Recovery. This starts the Mac up to the firmware rather than the the internal drive. Launch Disk Utility and format the external drive as GUID and Mac OS Extended. Make sure you select the correct drive. You don't want to wipe out your internal drive.


Once the drive is formatted for the Mac, close Disk Utility. Then choose to install OS X / macOS. It will default to the internal drive, so make sure to click the button to select which drive you want to install the OS on. Choose the new external drive. As part of the process, it will make whatever drive you're installing the OS to the default startup drive. So when it's done, it will automatically restart to the external drive.


Be cautious at this point. Copy off something relatively small to the new drive, then delete it from the nearly full internal drive. As you slowly open up space, you can start copying larger amounts of data at once, and then delete them from the internal. Keep doing this until you have at least 5 GB of free space on the internal drive. From that point, you can either remain booted to the external drive and continue moving files from there, or boot to the internal drive and push files to the new drive.


If you're unsure how to do any of this, get someone familiar with Macs to help. Take it to an Apple Store and have them help if necessary.

Aug 23, 2013 10:18 AM in response to agoldie

The startup disk is the hard drive your computer boots to. Can you see an icon for it on the desktop? If not, click on the desktop so the title next to the Apple icon at the upper left says Finder. Then choose Finder > Preferences. You should see this:


User uploaded file


If it's not checked, but a check next to Hard disks. All mounted drives will appear on the left side of the screen, assuming you don't already have your desktop cluttered with files and folders. If more than one drive icon appears, and you're not sure which is your boot drive, go back to the Apple at the top left and choose About This Mac.


You'll see a heading for Startup Disk, followed by the name of the drive which is currently the boot drive (startup disk). Close the "About This Mac" window. Now locate that same named drive icon and right click on it, then choose Get Info from the menu that appears. What does it say next to Available?

Aug 23, 2013 1:17 PM in response to agoldie

As Niel noted. You need to make room - lots of it. You only have a half GB of space left on the hard drive, and OS X should have at minimum a breathing room area of 2 GB.


Move any personal data off the drive onto an external hard drive that does not need to be on your main, internal drive. Videos take up huge amounts of space. Especially full length movies.


There is a real danger of the drive getting so full that the OS cannot operate properly, which can lead to data loss. So before you add any new files to the drive, move as much off as you can.

Aug 23, 2013 2:37 PM in response to agoldie

If you mean you're using it as a Time Machine backup, that's not the same thing.


1) A Time Machine backup leaves copies of everything on the main drive, so the external drive files are duplicates, which is what's supposed to happen. But...


2) If you remove the originals from the main drive, Time Machine will eventually delete the backup copies when it needs to make room for new data. Since the originals are no longer on the main drive, the assumption is you no longer need the copies, either.


For long term backups that will not automatically disappear, you need to put them on a drive that is not controlled by Time Machine.

Aug 23, 2013 2:49 PM in response to agoldie

Any external drive you want purchase. When you first plug it in and turn the drive on, and the system asks if you want to use it with Time Machine, just answer no. Then format it as Mac OS Extended and use it as a plain ol' hard drive. What you put on it stays there until you delete it. Once you copy your large data files to the external, they can then be deleted from the main drive.


Maybe Niel knows, but I don't use iPhoto or iMovie, so I'm not sure what happens when you manually move their databases of file and folders to another drive. They are there on the external at that point, but the apps will likely wonder where they went since it will looking for them in their original location.

Start-up disk full????

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