iMac hard drive getting too full

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Level 1

8 points

iMac hard drive getting too full

Hi,

I have a beautiful 2008 27" iMac, which has served me well for years. I still love it and would like to keep using it. It came with a 500 GB hard drive. I have recently purchased and connected a 2 TB "My Passport" external drive. I have been doing back-ups through Time Machine.

Unfortunately, my hard drive has 400 GB of family photos and movie clips, thanks to our awesome iPhones.

Is there a way that I can move all of these pictures and movies to my external drive, while taking them off of my desktop iMac?

I don't want to take the chance of losing my photos. I have a friend who bought extra space on the iCloud; however, she told me once she filled that space, the older pictures and movies started dropping off in a "first in, first out" manner, losing them permanently (which hurts a lot, who wants to lose those precious children's baby pictures).

My computer has a DVD writer built in, but it doesn't seem to recognize blank writable DVD's anymore. I'm assuming it is no longer working. I tried to access it using "Disk Utility" but my computer is not recognizing the "Superdrive" (it's grey'ed out and not selectable).

I just upgraded my iMac to Yosemite, and I have a maxed out RAM of 4 GB. I'm hoping by freeing up space on my computer, I will be able to put many more pictures to come as well as potentially speed it up.

Please help. Any suggestions?

NickG

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Oct 23, 2014 9:26 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,532 points

Oct 23, 2014 9:33 PM in response to docnsg

Do not use your TM drive for additional storage, all HD's eventually fail so moving data to a backup drive would be foolish. When that drive fails you will lose all of your data and backup too. The solution is simple though, get yourself another EHD (I'd recommend a higher quality drive than a WD, something like a OWC Mercury Elite Pro. Much higher quality that any WD external and the failure rate much lower compared to WD. You can find them at:

www.macsales.com

Then move your large libraries such as you iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie libraries to the new EHD. Apple explains how this is done in:

iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD

iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD

iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD

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Answer 2

kaz-k

Level 8

49,068 points

Oct 23, 2014 9:39 PM in response to docnsg

iPhoto: How to move the Library folder to a new location

iPhoto '11: Move your iPhoto library to a new location

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Answer 3

MichelPM

Level 10

80,968 points

Oct 23, 2014 9:50 PM in response to docnsg

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

You should never, EVER let a computer 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/ 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

Also, Find Any File

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/

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!

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