Q: Ibook G4 Hard Drive Issues

How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive

1. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
2. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
3. Also, see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
4. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
5. Be sure to Empty the Trash to recover the space.
6. Replace the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
7. Use OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

[Permission to use part or all of the above has been granted by Kappy, exclusively, to theratter.]

You could get and use a FireWire externally enclosed hard drive, one with its

own AC power adapter, and that has an Oxford chipset so it can boot OS X...

And make a clone of the internal drive to the external; test it, then erase the

computer's internal hard drive. (Older versions of SuperDuper clone utility

are available from ShirtPocket software maker site.)

This would start you over with a formatted drive ready for OS X. You could

also test the computer's hard drive; if you get a new replacement HDD for

this old PowerPC G4 computer be aware it is an ATA/IDE (PATA) & harder

to get a suitable replacement.

My iBook G4 1.33GHz 12-inch (Mid 2005) has similar configuration, in that it

has a 40GB HDD (actually about 37GB after format) + 1.5GB RAM, w/ more

free space than yours indicates. Runs slow w/ 10.5.8, it worked better with

original 10.4.11 Tiger and included set of applications. Faster, stable, better.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Legacy_Pro

https://eshop.macsales.com/search/legacy+pro+

The OWC macsales.com company has some SSD Mercury Legacy hard drives

that could immensely help the older PPC Mac run better and be able to handle

the extra load the Leopard 10.5.8 puts in the hardware. A rotational HDD is way

too slow; and part of any free space (unused capacity) would be needed for the

Virtual Memory for OS X to use. I've noticed on my G4 PPC Macs with 10.5.8

they ask for up to 28GB of hard drive capacity for Virtual Memory. And this is

with the chip memory fully upgraded, too. So that's a lot of read-writes to Disk.

The iFixit guides can give you some idea of the complexity of any hardware upgrade

in the iBook G4 series. They are not easy & are subject to other incidental damages.

A good repair shop that knows older Mac portable upgrades may be worth asking.

Good luck in any event...!

The system files, applications, built in utilities, and any included software or that which

you may have installed; these are among the contents of the storage. And any works

that you may have created and saved to the computer, including purchased or copied

music files, images, video... these latter items consume vast quantities of storage.

The Activity Monitor or System Profiler (I'm not using a PPC G4 now, so the reference

is not the same in some instances) or access details in the system from About this Mac

and look into the More Info section. Also, the Console utility can show you more cryptic

logs of what is going on and when it was doing it.

I just happened across your reply and the time now locally is nearing 3AM here. So that

means I should've been offline & perhaps asleep some hours ago. And to say a reply

from me these days may be a bit less detailed than one, say 5 years ago.

A few hours back, I was using my G4 Mini (10.5.8) and it cannot be upgraded in RAM

past a single 1024MB chip, PC2700 DDR333. Single slot, nothing soldered on board.

The hard disk drive, rotational, is a choke-point slow device. It is about 100GB capacity

and if I recall, may be as fast as 5400-RPM. The aforementioned use of drive capacity

as Virtual Memory becomes evident when the drive spins up to facilitate the temp files

that get written and read, in lieu of lack of physical RAM. This is an example of where a

quality SSD such as those Mercury Legacy models for older ATA/IDE/PATA computers

would be a real plus. None of my Macs have an SSD, all are rotational.

So to have and use an external hard disk drive as an extended storage archive, and

plug it into the Mac (and remember to unmount it correctly when not in use) with a

FireWire cable and in suitable FW supported enclosure that can support OS X clones

is a good idea. I have a few externally enclosed FireWire drives and several clones

for my older G4 Macs. A few iMac G4s, one G4 Mini, one G4 iBook, and a newer Mini

that has dual 1-TB HDDs plus has 16GB RAM. This doesn't see much use, it's newest.

With the older OS X systems, the content does not appear in graphic color bands as it

would in a more recent OS X system. After Lion 10.7.5 the OS X changed, the versions

that run on Intel-based Macs are different; increasingly so. My newest is 10.9.5, it's OK.

(While the old PPC G4 cannot run anything newer - conditionally - than OS X 10.5.8.)

It is very easy to fill up a small capacity hard disk drive. My early MacBook1.1 13-inch

1.83GHz CoreDuo has a bit of an upgrade, while only running 10.5.8; the HDD is now

a 160GB 7200-RPM rotational hard drive, and the memory is upgraded to the max it

can use, 2GB 667MHz. This would do best with Snow Leopard 10.6.8, a nicer build.

But not in the budget. Nor are SSDs for those who'd see the most gain from them.

You may be able to locate rotational ATA-IDE (parallel ATA; not SATA) to replace the

one in the iBook G4, stock were slow, some 4500-RPM. For the trouble, go w/ SSD.

Anyway, I'm listening to some winds and wonder about the power. I have UPS units

to automatically switch over to battery, and these also filter the power high/low for

safety. Better than simple surge protectors, with user replaceable batteries that last

for several years. I'm hoping the power won't go out. I usually will shut off items if the

weather gets too weird; we're getting a mix of different direction weather. Between the

arctic and north Pacific. A good deal of tropical influence now also affects the winters.

Much more precipitation in the way of rain or snow where clear & cold was more likely.

Some archived information may be found online, the older Support articles that were

helpful for use with PPC Macs have become vaporware nowadays.

Sorry to not have an answer for you, I could show the details in a running vintage Mac

sooner than I could try & remember their antics. I'm actually not sure about the newest

Mac I got a little over a year ago (from Apple online) & it relies too much on the internet.

I don't have anything automatically updating, though I keep two of them on all the time

and let them sleep. The longest up-time for a G4 has been 10 months without restart.

Luckily, no outage (had UPS and backup generator; so left Macs on) affected that run.

Here's looking at 3:15 AM sooner than later, so I'm signing off at this point in time.

Good luck & happy computing!

You could look into the system in several ways as suggested to see what a previous owner

may have installed and how much space each item is taking up; however a new installation

and then update the files (as available, if so, online from Apple software update) should be

a better cure if you don't have any reason to backup first.

A good backup can also be a bootable clone, so that is a great way to go.

{Once you erase and/or reformat the hard drive, hopefully all those system

discs will load correctly. Sometimes they can be stubborn. That is about a

time to get set up for a full system clone; then you don't need the DVDs to

reinstall. And have different versions of your Mac, cloned to external drive

partitions. Just don't confuse a bare-bones clone with a backup version.}

Some currently available software tools that could let you look into the files, their sizes

and locations in the hard drive, may not work with that old of an OS X. New versions

are what usually are offered from the maker sites; (free such as Grand Perspective)

and some have older versions available from their web site.

Good luck & happy computing!