Removing unused printer drivers (All 1.23GB of them)

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Removing unused printer drivers (All 1.23GB of them)

Over the last few days, I've been cleaning out our hard drive (after finding out that we apparently only had 11.5GB left on a 160GB [148GB **** WD] hard drive).
After having a look around and deleting as much as I could find from the users and shared folder, I had a look around to see what else there was that was hogging so much space.
I found that the /Library directory was taking up about 11GB, which might be a bit big, but all right. what surprised me was when I had a look to see what was making it so big. App support was of course massive, but so was the printers folder, 1.57GB. now since we only have one printer (the extremely nice Canon MP780. buy it, it truly is a joy to use) I thought that was just a bit much. Looking deeper still, I found that the canon folder took up about 300-400 MB, sadly the Epson one was taking up more than twice that.
So to the point. What I want to know is if it's safe to delete any or all the ones I don't need and just keep the rest?
Thanks for any help you can give. I know this is a bit obscure, and usually I'd just go for it, but I know how temperamental printers can be if you don't treat them just how they want to be treated.

Al.

(P.S: when installing a new system, learn form my mistakes and just use the printer drivers you need. more can be added later)

iMac G5 1.8GHz 17in 1.5GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7) iPod 5G 30GB black

iMac G5 1.8GHz 17in 1.5GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.4.6), iPod 5G 30GB black

Posted on Jul 3, 2006 11:11 PM

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Answer 1

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Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Jul 3, 2006 11:34 PM in response to Axman

You can delete printer families you don't use, but only delete the folders for the unneeded families.

You should generally avoid deleting files and folders outside of your user folder since they are typically needed by the operating system. Consider instead archiving unused documents as well as watching the size of your Music, Pictures, and Movies folders.

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Answer 2

Axman Author

Level 1

50 points

Jul 3, 2006 11:44 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks for the quick reply Kappy.
yeah I understand the importance of all the docs outside the home folders. when you say printer families, do you mean say the EPSON folder, or the folders inside those? As we have no intentions of getting another printer anytime soon, we really only need the Canon drivers. (I'll be keeping the PPD's folder to on closer inspection. I think it contains the print dialogue files for all the printers, so best to leave that one.)
And with the archiving, I've been doing so much of that lately, it's not funny. for anyone interested, 7zX is a great little app for compressing large files (for example, folders containing mainly text/course code that ate about 350MB, it can get them down to about 30-40MB). Using it, I've managed to recover almost 8GB's without having to actually get rid of anything.
Al.

iMac G5 1.8GHz 17in 1.5GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7) iPod 5G 30GB black

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Jul 4, 2006 12:39 AM in response to Axman

If you don't need any Epson printer drivers, then simply delete the entire Epson folder, i.e., /Library/Printers/Epson/. If you only want you one single driver installed for your printer, then I suppose you could delete all the family folders, then re-install your printer driver for the model you have.

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Answer 4

Axman Author

Level 1

50 points

Jul 4, 2006 1:26 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks again kappy, just deleted the biggest of the folders, and got rid of almost a gig, yay for me
Cya, Al.

iMac G5 1.8GHz 17in 1.5GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7) iPod 5G 30GB black

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Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Jul 4, 2006 10:55 AM in response to Axman

Glad to help.

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