Help! Startup disc full. Can't start at all!

Do you have another Mac, or an external hard drive with a bootable system?

Try holding down the shift key at startup, starting when the chime sounds and letting go when the Apple logo appears. This starts you up in safe mode, which will clear some caches as well as disabling third-party software that loads at startup. That may make the difference and allow the machine to start up.

If that doesn't work, post back here for further instructions. Let us know if you have any backups.

If safe mode works, first examine your trash. If it's not empty, empty it.

Next, go to your downloads folder and throw away any leftover downloads that you no longer need. Depending on the person, this could make a big difference or none at all. Be sure to empty the trash to actually delete the items.

You can also make a temporary difference by deleting your caches... hold down the option key while selecting Library from the Go menu in the Finder. In the folder that opens, find the Caches folder. Open that folder, select everything inside and throw it all in the trash. Then empty the trash. These items will eventually be re-created, so this is only a very short-term fix to get you up and running.

If all this gets you a decent amount of hard drive space back, restart the computer normally. If you are still borderline on free space (as in, less than about 10-20 GB free), follow the directions here to find out what's taking up all the space:

Where did my Disk Space go?

Recovering Disk Space

If you have less than 15 GB free or less than 10% free you definitely need to delete or offload some files or purchase a lager disk or SSD (see below). More free space is better. If you let the space fall much below 10 GB you might not be able to boot your machine.

Initial easy steps to gain disk space:

- Start iPhoto.

Empty its trash.

Restart.

- Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.

Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.

Select "Library" from the drop down menu.

Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes

Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.

- Empty the Trash.

- Restart.

- Re-index your system disk (Macintosh HD):

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

Backup:

Run a Time Machine (or other) backup since you are about to delete and move files and you may need to recover from any inadvertent mistakes or decisions. You will need one external hard drive for your Time Machine (or other) backup and a second if you plan to offload some files. (See suggestions for where to purchase hard drives at the end of this message.)

For more about backups:

Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Most commonly used backup methods:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031

Deleting files:

Then use the free application OmniDiskSweeper http://www.omnigroup.com/more to explore your volume in descending order by size so you can attack the problem from the top down, deleting the largest unwanted files first. Delete with caution and do not delete any system files. Do not rely on restoring files from Time Machine; delete only those files you never want to see again. Remember to empty the trash after trashing the files.

Additional references on freeing disk space:

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

http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html

Offloading files:

Consider moving some of the no-often-used large files or directories to an external disk. Use ODS again to find them. As noted above this will be at least your second hard drive. Your first one(s) is/are for your Time Machine (or other) backup(s). Do not offload files onto a Time Machine disk.

Format the second drive as Mac OS Extended (journaled). Using OWS to find large files/folders and copy them from the system drive to the external hard drive and delete them from your internal drive.

Then  > System Preferences > Time Machine > Options… > Remove the offload HD name from the exclusions list.

Now both your system disk and your external offload disk will be backed up onto your Time Machine disk.

—————

From: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html

To move your iTunes Music folder to another disk or partition:

To change the location of your iTunes Music folder, carefully follow the instructions in the AppleCare® Knowledge Base document "iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder."Additional information can be found in iTunes Help.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.thexlab.com/105/ 00000849.html

Laptop users may want to consider having two iTunes libraries: a small library of current favorites on their computer, while their complete library resides on an external hard drive. Utilities like iTunes Library Manager enable you to easily have multiple iTunes libraries you can use with your account. https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7689/itunes-library-manager

To move your iPhoto Library folder to another disk or partition:

To move the iPhoto Library folder to a new location, employ the instructions in the AppleCare Knowledge Base document from http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506 corresponding to the version of iPhoto you are using. Additional information can be found in iPhoto Help.

Laptop users may want to consider having two iPhoto libraries: a small library of current, favorite photographs on their computer, while their complete library, or archives of older photos are saved on an external hard drive. Utilities such as iPhoto Buddy and iPhoto Library Manager enable you to have multiple iPhoto libraries that you can use with your account.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12175/iphoto-buddy

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7158/iphoto-library-manager

Hardware — Bigger disk/SSD:

You should not upgrade your hardware if it is covered by the warranty or AppleCare.

If your system has upgradeable storage then if you are still tight on disk space consider larger storage. If you have a disk consider replacing it with a one TB disk. Check out an upgrade to an SSD-Hybrid disk. Google "Seagate 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive SATA 6Gbps 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch". If you have an SSD consider increasing its capacity to 240 or 480 GB. A standard 240 GB SSD would cost from $200 to $280. See OWC and Crucial: http://www.crucial.com/ for options. OWC sells 120, 240 and 480 GB SSD upgrades for MacBook Airs. A 240 GB upgrade costs $265. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ .

For backups and offloading data to an external drive, PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

You should never, EVER let a conputer hard drive get completely full, EVER!

With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.

If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.

Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.

Have you emptied your iMac's Trash icon in the Dock?

If you use iPhoto, iPhoto has its own trash that needs to be emptied, also.

If you store images in other locations other than iPhoto, then you will have to weed through these to determine what to archive and what to delete.

If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!

Look though other Apple Mail folders like the junk mail and delete the mail that is in there. Look through your sent items folders and see there is any mail in there that can be deieted.

Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive to disc, flash drives or external hard drive, older emails you want to save.

Other things you can do to gain space.

Once you have around 15 GBs regained, do a search, download and install OmniDisk Sweeper.

This app will help you locate files that you can move/archive and/or delete from your system.

STAY AWAY FROM DELETING ANY FILES FROM OS X SYSTEM FOLDER!

Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.

Again, archive to disc, flash drives, ext. hard drives or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.

Look in your Applications folder, if you have applications you haven't used in a long time, if the app doesn't have a dedicated uninstaller, then you can simply drag it into the OS X Trash icon. IF the application has an uninstaller app, then use it to completely delete the app from your Mac.

Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.

When you install and launch it, let it do its initial automatic tests, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run the maintenance tabs that let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.

Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.

move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.

If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.

Good Luck!

🙂

the same thing is happening to my laptop but nothing is working and the memory space is basically full and it completely slipped my mind to check about this a while ago. but yea my laptop is not turning on, it goes onto the log in page and then shuts down. HELP is there any way possible that i can start my laptop up and delete some things without completely erasing all my files and my whole laptop? HELP HELP HELP

Did you try booting into the Safe Mode as Thomas suggested?

Safe Mode - Mavericks also Yosemite

Safe Mode - About

Do you have a backup?

Im in safe mode but can't log into my account

What happens when you try to log in?

UNfortunatly it does not work

when i do shift start i havé à demand for code to access my Account

when i do it I havé à "panic" liste in smal letters at the top left of the screen

what can I do fromage Mongolia where I am?

Not with me here travelling in Mongolia

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.