where did the HD space go

[zeppelin68]

I have a macbook pro with the 160gb hard drive. It's partitioned 100gb OSX and 60gb windows.(too much but w/e) Under system profiler, the OSX drive's capacity is only 88gb. Right now I only have about 30gb left. My Itunes takes up 10gigs, and I have about 9gigs in video, but other than that I can't think of what is taking up so much space. Does anyone know of anything I can delete?

[mad jew]

You could always use an app like WhatSize (http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/index.php) in an administrator account to find where all the space is being used. If that doesn't help, then do a quick search 'round here for similar threads asking about what can safely be removed from OSX. :)

[Cybergypsy]

When i used a PC and ran Vista I had my HD space gone daily, it was really strange

[Kilamite]

160GB hard drive - and Windows gets 60GB. Formatted capacity isn't exactly 160GB remember, so you won't get 100GB for your Mac partition. 88GB sounds right.

Virtual Memory takes up some.

[phatphil]

My iTunes library is around 20-25 GB and it uses a large chunk of my hard drive (64 GB Mac, 10 GB XP). I've had to start regularly moving files that I use to an external hard drive because of the limited space. :(

Formatting is not the reason for the drastic difference of 12 GB above, although it is responsible for a minute difference. On a computer, 1024 bytes = 1 kilobytes, but hard drive manufacturers use 1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte to calculate the drive size that they advertise... it's rather deceptive. When dealing with larger hard drives especially, this can account for a very large amount of space.

[~Shard~]

To clean up your hard drive in general I recommend the following steps:

- use OmniDiskSweeper (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/8667) (not free) or my personal favorite WhatSize (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13006) (free) to determine what all is taking up room on your HDD and where it is
- remove GarageBand and iDVD if you do not need them - that should free up around 6 GB right there
- check out /Library/Printers/ - 2 GB of printer drivers that you may or may not need
- use Monolingual (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7758) to remove the unnecessary language resources from your Mac*. Another option is to use Delocalizer (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13503)
- lastly, you could always use AppZapper (http://appzapper.com/) (not free) or uApp (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23414) (free) to ensure that when you uninstall any programs that all those pesky sub-folders, etc. are deleted

That should just about do it. :cool:

* a note about Monolingual. If you are not careful this can seriously screw up your Mac if it is Intel-based. Basically, leave the Architectures settings alone. If you delete G3, G4, G5 then anything which is PPC-based which will try to run under Rosetta, won't. Otherwise, Monolingual is great. ;)