How much storage space does a user account take up?

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Level 1

9 points

How much storage space does a user account take up?

Hi there,

I have a MacBook Pro Retina, mid-2014 model, running OS X Yosemite 10.10.5, 2.6 GHz processor, 8GB of memory, and a 128GB hard drive.

I want to free up some space on my hard drive, and I'm wondering what this "other" category entails - as you can see in the picture, "other" accounts for 53.77GB - a significant amount of space on this hard drive. I've done a lot already to eliminate other big files, including buying a 2TB external hard drive for photos, movies, duplicate detective, etc.

My question pertains to user accounts. I have two user accounts on my computer, so I'm wondering if the setting up and running another user account is taking up a lot of the storage space, specifically in the "other" category? I can't seem to find much on any forums about this topic anywhere. Can anyone shed light on this issue?

Thanks in advance for your help!

- Jamieson

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Sep 8, 2015 2:35 PM

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Answer 1

jamgas Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 3, 2016 6:29 PM in response to jamgas

I think I've found a solution to my original question. I finally got around to deleting the secondary account that I ended up not using for the past five months, and after moving all files I needed over to my main account (about 1.5GB of the 2GB), I suddenly have an extra 15GB of empty storage space!

I don't have an answer as to how this happened or what types of files were removed, but deleting this account has certainly opened up a lot of space.

- Jamieson

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Answer 2

Niel

Community+ 2025

Level 10

741,323 points

Sep 8, 2015 3:43 PM in response to jamgas

Less than 1MB.

(133016)

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Answer 3

Niel

Community+ 2025

Level 10

741,323 points

Sep 8, 2015 3:42 PM in response to jamgas

It can vary widely. Choose Computer from the Finder's Go menu, double-click the internal drive, then Users, select that folder, and choose Get Info from the File menu; you may need to be logged in with that account to get the correct or any figure.

(133006)

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Answer 4

Sep 8, 2015 2:46 PM in response to jamgas

If you have a 2 TB drive for photos and movies and you moved it over there already, you certainly did remove the old files from Macintosh HD. They still appears to be there.

Another candidate to be moved to the external drive is Audio. It is huge.

What ever you do you need to do it quickly because with only 11 GB of free space, you are rapidly approaching the point where your system will either stop or corrupt the directory.

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Answer 5

jamgas Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 8, 2015 3:41 PM in response to jamgas

Thanks for all your responses, they are helpful for sure - but I think I might not have explicated my question as well as I could have.

What I'm most curious about is if creating another user account takes up a lot of hard drive space? As in, how much space will a blank account made on the device take up? Would there be a lot of internal 're-wiring' or files that are copied over to the other account to make it work? - apologies for my non-technical vocabulary, I'm not very well-versed in tech jargon.

Thanks!

- Jamieson

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Answer 6

Sep 8, 2015 5:19 PM in response to jamgas

With the information you have provide it is obvious what your problem is.

Creating an additional user account is not the cause of your problem.

It is because you still have audio, movies and photos on your system disk. Once you get that data moved to the external disk drive, you will then have plenty of free space. That will take care of your problem.

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