Q: I accidentally let my startup disk get full.  How can I delete a file or two on the startup disk to allow me to boot up? Running Mavericks and I don't have a current time machine backup

Try a safe boot with the safe boot as instructed at http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14204

Allan

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive

  1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.

  2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.

  3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.

  4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.

  5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.

  6. See The Storage Display.

You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.

You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.

Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

If you no longer can boot the computer, then you have no recourse but to erase the drive and start over from scratch. Your files are no longer accessible except by:

1. Remove the drive, install it in an external enclosure, try accessing your files by connecting it to another computer.
2. Connecting the computer to another Mac with Firewire ports using a Firewire cable. You can then try accessing the drive using Target Disk Mode.

To use your computer again you will need to use your Snow Leopard DVD:

Clean Install of Snow Leopard

 

Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase

the drive and everything on it.

 

     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came

         with your computer.  Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.

         After the chime press and hold down the  "C" key.  Release the key when you see

         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.

 

     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue

         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.

         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive

         size.)  Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.  Set the number of

         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button

         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended

         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.

 

     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed

         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.

 

     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup

         Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same

         username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup

         Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh

         install of OS X.  You can now begin the update process by opening Software

         Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.

 

Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

You were quite fortunate. The situation you were in could have been worse if the entire directory became corrupted and could completely garbage your files. Glad you found an excellent resolution.