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Jul 12, 2015 1:31 PM in response to tylerfromINby judysings,Hello tylerfromIN,
I understand you have just purchased an external hard drive and want to move files to it to free up space on your MacBook Air. The message you are receiving "startup disk is full" is referring to your internal hard drive, or Macintosh HD.
To find out how much disk space you have, open Disk Utility, click your disk (usually named Macintosh HD), then click Info.
Have you been backing up your computer with Time Machine to an external drive, or is this your first external drive? It's always a good idea to have two separate backups of your important data.
The first thing you need to do is make sure your new LaCie is formatted for Mac OS X Extended Journaled. Then you can drag files and folders including your Music folder and Pictures folder to it. Make sure you can open the files on the external drive before deleting them from your Mac.
Here are some resources to get you started:
Before you begin to use your new external hard drive, reformat it to the Mac OS Extended file system. This article is about prepareing an external drive to backup an Aperture library, but the process in Disk Utility is the same, regardless of the data you want to move.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201909
- Be sure your drive is attached and mounted.
- If you have already written any data to the drive, back it up before proceeding to the next step.
- In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities. The /Applications/Utilities folder will open.
- Launch Disk Utility.
- Click the icon for your external hard drive in the sidebar on the left.

- Click the Erase tab along the top of the window.

- From the Volume Format menu, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

- Enter a name for the external hard drive in the Name field.
- Click the Erase button.
Last Modified: Apr 1, 2015
Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac - Apple Support
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250OS X Yosemite: Use external storage devices
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19024?locale=en_USOS X Yosemite: Increase disk space
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19068?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_USTo find out how much disk space you have, open Disk Utility, click your disk (usually named Macintosh HD), then click Info.
Back up your iTunes library by copying it to an external drive - Apple Support
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201625OS X Yosemite: Folder basics
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18762?locale=en_USCreate a folder
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Click the desktop if you want to create the folder on the desktop; otherwise, open a Finder window and navigate to where you want to create the folder.
Quickly group multiple items into a folder
You can quickly create a folder of items on the desktop or in a Finder window.
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Select all the items you want to group together.
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Control-click one of the selected items, then choose New Folder with Selection.
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Enter a name for the folder, then press Return.
Keep an item in its original location and put a copy in a folder: Hold down the Option key, then drag the item to the folder.
Copy files to a different disk: Drag the files to the disk.
OS X Yosemite: Delete files and folders
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18772?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_USAt any time, you can get rid of files, folders, and other items that you no longer need. You start by dragging items to the Trash, but the items aren’t deleted until you empty the Trash.
OS X Yosemite: Remove a backed-up item from your backup disk
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18855?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_USHope this information helps ....
