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Freeing up Startup Disk Space

I am needing to free up startup disk space on my MB Pro, (early 2011, 120 GB flash drive) and my system report tells me that I have 5 GB of movie files. However, I have no movie files in iTunes, iMovie, downloads, or other obvious locations.


Does anyone have any suggestions where these files might be hiding?


Thank you!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Oct 16, 2014 9:33 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 2:32 AM

That does seem odd. Have you tried using Spotlight from Finder to run a search for files of type movie? Like this:


User uploaded file


Hope that helps.

14 replies

Oct 17, 2014 2:51 AM in response to wyantmw99

Here are some general tips to keep your Mac's hard drive trim and slim as possible


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 Mac's Trash icon in the Dock?

If you use iPhoto or Aperture, both have 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 are an iMovie or Final Cut user, both apps have their own individual Trash location that needs to be emptied, too!

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

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.

Look through your other Mailboxes and other Mail categories to see If there is other mail you can archive and/or delete.

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.

To find other large files, download an app called Omni Disk Sweeper.


http://www.omnigroup.com/more


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


http://www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php


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.


Moving iTunes library


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449


Moving iPhoto library


http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506


Moving iMovie projects folder


http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2289


Good Luck!

Oct 17, 2014 11:33 AM in response to ivansky

Thanks for the reply. I did go use Spotlight to do a search, as you suggested, and I did find some .avi and .mp4 files that were still showing up, (even though I had previously archived them some time ago and removed them from the MB Pro.)


However, when I then moved these items to trash, and emptied the trash, they disappeared but there was no change in the amount of 'movies' being shown on the startup disk storage.


I also downloaded OmniDiskSweeper to see if I could locate large movie files that way, but did not find anything coming up.


I have freed up some disk space by pruning my music library, so I am now at 15GB free space on the startup, but if you come across any other ideas about the mystery 5 GB movies, please do not hesitate to send me a line.


Thank you (and your colleagues) for your help so far on this one!

Oct 21, 2014 6:31 PM in response to wyantmw99

Based on my recommendations, were you able to free up ANY space on your Mac's hard drive regardless of the 5 GB discrepancy?

Those movie files are there.

I would suggest looking though your iTunes files, again or looking thorough whatever personal folders you have on your Mac's hard drive.

Movie files can be in any format and could be stored in other locations on your hard drive other than in iPhoto or iTunes.

Oct 21, 2014 6:49 PM in response to MichelPM

Hi Michel. I now have 18 GB free space on the startup drive, from deleting all the duplicate files I could locate. I noticed something new that I did not know about before - even though I backed up files (photos, movies, documents, email, etc.) to an external HD and then deleted the files, many of them still showed up when I did a file-specific search using spotlight in Finder. (like 'JPEG' , for example).


I have "re-removed" these items.

I have also removed all iPhoto stuff to an external HD, I have also used spotlight to look for JPEG, MPEG, AVI and MOVIE files and have removed any I found.

I also exported my mailbox stuff to an external HD.


Right now, I am making an iTunes copy to an external drive, and I will then remove a bunch of music files to get me comfortably down another 10 or 20 GB


I also turned off the automatic "mobile sync" backup, which had 4.3 GB stored.


I also downloaded and used ONYX to do disk verification and cache cleaning, etc.


All of the above helped, but the mystery of the 5 GB movie files remains - they are out there, somewhere. I will keep at it, and if I find where they are hiding, I will let you know for your further interest.


with regards,


Mike Wyant

Oct 22, 2014 1:51 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric. I have downloaded EasyFind, and used it to locate a number of .jpeg and .tiff files that I previously thought I had removed.


So, I moved them to the trash, and then emptied the trash. There were about 2 GB of files eliminated in this way.


But, for your interest, there was no change at all in the status bar for the startup disk storage - it remained constant.


This is also what I am experiencing with the movie files - I have found, moved to trash and emptied trash of movie files, but the status bar for the startup disk storage remains constant.


However, when I eliminate some music files from my iTunes, the status bar changes to reflect that.


Easyfind is nice, thanks for the suggestion. Maybe the problem is with the status bar itself? Maybe the files are being removed, just that the system info is not reflecting this ?


Anyway, thank you for your reply.


Regards,


Mike

Oct 23, 2014 2:43 AM in response to wyantmw99

So I was a bit intrigued by whether this system report is accurate, and if so, how it works. For instance, I know it takes more than a few seconds to scan all the files on the computer and add them up, so this display must be pre-calculated somehow. I am assuming we are all talking about the colourful bar chart that you see when you choose Apple menu...About this mac...click on the Storage tab.


I found this article which suggests that the report is based on the Spotlight index, and gives an example where it is completely wrong:

http://www.cnet.com/news/what-to-do-when-about-this-mac-lies-to-you/


I am inclined to suggest that you rebuild your spotlight index (keeping in mind that this could take hours, I think, so best to do it overnight) and then see if the report is any different. Also, I think that I would try a different Spotlight search after that if you are still having trouble: try going into the search bar from the magnifying glass at the top right of your screen, and just type "kind:movie" then click on "Show all in Finder". Perhaps that will give a slightly different result. You can see lots of good tips for this in the following article:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1132788/spotlight2.html


And finally, I am about to put a 256GB SSD into my son's laptop this weekend, they are really fairly inexpensive and it seems, quite easy to install into many Macs. If you buy them online you can double your storage at a reasonable price, or go bigger if you like. That will probably be a more productive way to solve your problem in the long run! I used upgradeable.com.au to help find my Mac model and select a suitable SSD.


Hope that helps.

Oct 23, 2014 5:33 AM in response to ivansky

ivansky wrote:

And finally, I am about to put a 256GB SSD into my son's laptop this weekend, they are really fairly inexpensive and it seems, quite easy to install into many Macs. If you buy them online you can double your storage at a reasonable price, or go bigger if you like. That will probably be a more productive way to solve your problem in the long run! I used upgradeable.com.au to help find my Mac model and select a suitable SSD.



This is good advice. If you can afford it, go for a bigger drive. 120GB is really cutting it close unless you accumulate almost nothing on your HD.

Freeing up Startup Disk Space

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