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I want to upgrade my software, but it says I need more start up memory. I keep my stuff on an external hard drive so I don't know what is eating my memory. How can I check this?

How can I figure out what is eating my memory so I can upgrade my software?

MacBook Air, Mac OS 10.85

Posted on Feb 26, 2015 2:08 PM

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1 reply

Feb 26, 2015 2:24 PM in response to KCDad

Do you mean disk storage space or physical RAM? The latter is memory, not the former. If you mean the former:


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 mean RAM, then you have to add more to the computer which is not possible on Air models.

I want to upgrade my software, but it says I need more start up memory. I keep my stuff on an external hard drive so I don't know what is eating my memory. How can I check this?

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