What to take out in a fresh install?

Get the RAM from a dealer that will replace it if it doesn't work with your Mac. Macs are more susceptible to bad RAM than their PC brethren.

As for the clean install, there are methods in place to remove this extra space post-install so feel free to keep Garageband et al, try them out, and ditch them later if you don't like them.

Having said that, you may want to refrain from installing the copious amount of printer drivers OSX insists on bundling, if you really need the space.

It's not necessary to reinstall OSX to trim it down.

Monolingual or Delocalizer will remove foreign language resources for you
Check http://www.versiontracker.com for all manner of Mac OSX shareware

You don't have to do a thing to make the OS recognize the RAM -- there is no BIOS or SETUP on a Mac to worry about. It handles resources like RAM and ports pretty much automatically.

As mad jew said, take out the Printer Drivers. It's outrageous how big they are. ~1.4GB if I remember

But I would recommend you also remove extra languages you don't speak, don't plan to learn, and can't even sound out
It's possible to do afterwards with an application like DeLocalizer or MonoLingual (and you'll probably want to after you've installed all your apps), but it's much easier to just do it from the start if you're going through the trouble of a reinstall.

reality

edit: well I guess I'm totally useless now

I've seen people recommend removing any extraneous printer drivers they don't need to free up space, but how does one go about removing them?

Just dragging them to the Trash, emptying and restarting should suffice.

Where exactly are the printer drivers located? And say if I remove one of them and later buy that printer, would installing the driver from the CD replace it or would that muck everything up?

In the Library, there's a folder named Printers and it's about 1.6GB on my system. Inside this is a list of various manufacturers. Reinstalling drivers from either the OSX disc or the printer manufacturer's disc should be fine.

And to clarify, I believe that's the root library.

As in:
Macintosh HD/Library/Printers

and not:
Macintosh HD/Users/fred/Library/Printers

Yeah, sorry, should have been more specific. It's not the System Library either.

Just for giggles, I went to see how much room the printer drivers are taking up on my computer ....... Holy Crap! 3.06Gb!!!!!

Man is that a lot of space. I guess I know where I can start getting some of my HD back. =)

HaroldC said:

Just for giggles, I went to see how much room the printer drivers are taking up on my computer ....... Holy Crap! 3.06Gb!!!!!

Man is that a lot of space. I guess I know where I can start getting some of my HD back. =)

Click to expand...

Mine was 1.99 GB. It took a while to trash too, I thought I deleted something important, but I checked and it was just the printer stuff. Monolingual is doin it's job right now. That's takin a while too, that's alot of stuff.

Just got done. It was 1.7 GBs. I didn't delete any of the input menus. I didn't want to delete anything that I needed for the keyboard layouts. Read in the help that you need it for the keyboard (roman language ones) but I didn't see any on the list. Anyone know which ones not to remove?

So why, exactly, does OS X install all those drivers? Are they useful at all to have?

dferrara said:

So why, exactly, does OS X install all those drivers? Are they useful at all to have?

Click to expand...

So you can hook up to any printer without delay, or problems?

Make sure you read the notes

I just checked out those monolingual and delocalizer on versiontracker. Delocalizer claims it hasn't been tested on anything 10.3 or newer and the reviews say that Monolingual will wreck Rosetta support on an Intel-Mac.

I just used the latest versions of Delocaliser, Printer Setup Repair and Whatsize on my MBP yesterday with no problem. Gained a load of space, something like 16GB total. That includes all the apps I'll never use like Garageband (including the loops), and some duplicate music files. Now all I need to do is make a backup -I've just read another thread about a failing hard drive and it frightened me...........

Garageband loops

How did you get rid of Garageband? Delete the app I know, but where are the loops to axe located?

Good to hear delocalizer worked, but I'll still do a backup first...

The loops are in root/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Apple Loops for GarageBand

An index that you won't need anymore is in root/Library/Audio/Apple Loops Index

Just do a complete reinstall, it's not that much of a hassle.

Also delete any unnecessary language files from your iLife apps. Just do a "Get Information", scroll down to the bottom of the window that pops up and in the area that says "languages" uncheck those you don't need.

Bern said:

Just do a complete reinstall, it's not that much of a hassle.

Also delete any unnecessary language files from your iLife apps. Just do a "Get Information", scroll down to the bottom of the window that pops up and in the area that says "languages" uncheck those you don't need.

Click to expand...

No kidding, the hassle is downloading all those third-party programs. OS X takes all of, what, 10 minutes to install?

I did "Get Info", what are all those languages doing there? I didn't install any of them...