the best way of creating space

external HD are cheap as dirt, grab a nice desktop HD for $100, or even a slim 2TB Toshiba HD for $117 😊

offload large files ON your Mac that you arent using to an external HD

Park it!

75% of the data that's stored on someones computer from countless studies has not been accessed for more than one year. Keeping this ‘dusty’ data on your computers HD/ SSD is bad due to:

Internal SSD/HD bloat

Encourages dangerous and lazy practice of pivoting important data on the most untrustworthy and likely to fail point, your internal drive.

Such data need to be parked immediately into passive archives

In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. You should never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’.

Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their computers internal HD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.

Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your macbook has a HD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your computer to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.

best options for the price, and high quality HD:

Quality 1TB drives are $50 per TB on 3.5" or $65 per TB on 2.5"

Perfect 1TB for $68

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B005J7YA3W/ref=sr_1_ 1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379452568&sr=8-1&keywords=1tb+toshiba

Nice 500gig for $50. ultraslim and perfect

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B009F1CXI2/ref=s r_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377642728&sr=1-1&keywords=toshiba+slim+500gb

2.5" USB portable High quality BEST FOR THE COST, Toshiba "tiny giant" 2TB drive (have several of them, LOT of storage in a SMALL package) $117

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48 /ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1379182740&sr=1-4&keywords=2tb+toshiba

*This one is the BEST portable external HD available that money can buy:
HGST Touro Mobile 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive
$88

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Mobile-Portable-External-0S03559/dp/B009GE6JI8/ref=sr _1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383238934&sr=8-1&keywords=HGST+Touro+Mobile+Pro+1TB+USB+3.0+72 00+RPM

Most storage experts agree on the Hitachi 2.5"

what is taking up most of your space? your Iphoto library? Itunes music? Vids? 😊

Export it to at least 2 external sources (2 HD, or 1 HD and online, or HD and DVD burn)

Moving the iPhoto library is safe and simple - quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive (2 HD preferably!) - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)

And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto

The premise of "my external HD (singular)" has landed many people in a state of depression due to data loss, .

...no HD is to be trusted ever, the key word is redundancy. The data ON the Mac itself doesnt count in the 2-copy scheme of data protection.

See here for answer about the OTHER which is taking up space:

http://pondini.org/TM/30.html

and here:

http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html

See Kappys excellent note on the rest of “other” files taking up your space:

What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?

A HW solution is to upgrade your MacBook Air SSD (assuming the MBA is out of warranty). OWC sells 480 GB SSD upgrades for 2009 to 2012 MacBook Airs for $120 to $190 and a 120 GB SSD upgrade for 2008 models for $155. See OWC: http://eshop.macsales.com .

Well, when the back of your pickup truck is full of watermelons (data),.....its time to "offload them into the shed (external HD)"

rather than "buy a bigger truck" 😊

LoL