New User with stupid question. please help

[sportsfan36]

Hello everyone.
Im a student. I bought a macbook in the summer and have been extremely happy. I will never leave go back to pc's.

anyways

I literally have 0 hard drive space lol. i searched all the programs and all of that. however when i place a movie in the recycling bin and empty it. i still do not have space. im guessing there is some other file where everything is.

Im trying to delete gigs of movies but no space is opening up. this seems to be for regular files as well.

please help.

[thejadedmonkey]

This may sound stupid, but did you empty the recycling bin?

[SmurfBoxMasta]

This may sound stupid, but did you empty the recycling bin?

and/or logging out/restarting afterwards ??

[sportsfan36]

yea and yes.

even when i search for a show that i had i cant see it.

[Father Jack]

Did you ever do one of those "secure delete all empty space" things?

I did once and it filled the whole hard drive which necessitated an "Erase and install" ... :(

[crazycat]

Thats really strange, try ot make a new account and see if the problems still exists. If you could not fix the problem try to do a clean install and download iStat menu which will give you some tool that you could have on the top right side f your menu bar. Its very helpfull and shows you network usage, temp of your computer, memory used and hard drive space. I will also recommend you downloading Whatsize, it shows you exactly were all your files are and how much space they are taking up.

http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/

[tjevans]

I don't know how much, if at all, you use these, but be sure to empty your trash in iPhoto and iMovie. Those trash cans are not connected to your "main" trash.

[sportsfan36]

okay so after some help from the jadedmonkey i think i found the problem

A while ago i turned on file vault turned , i can't turn it off because i need 1000kb free or something.

and I have a 56gb sparceimage in my home directory.

i dont think i can really delete anything. lol

hope this helps.

thanks


**
another note when i found this file from looking at info of a movie i had left. when i typed it in and found it i double clicked.
it then prompted me for a password. when i gave an incorrect one naturally the password screen didnt go away. when the correct one was entered nothing opens.

i then try to move it into the trash and it says " the operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for "myname.sparseimage".

[sportsfan36]

thanks for the help i solved the problem.

i just wiped my drive.

its so clean again lol. im def not setting up file vault though.:p

[itickings]

thanks for the help i solved the problem.

i just wiped my drive.

its so clean again lol. im def not setting up file vault though.:p

Well, wiping the drive will reclaim space for sure, but that was a bit extreme :)

If Filevault is active, you will be asked if you want to reclaim the space (of there is any to reclaim) when you log out. Just pressing the default button there will shrink the sparse-image and return your free space. It may take a while though.

Anyway, if you don't have a need for FileVault, you're doing the right thing to skip it. Usually it is overkill to encrypt everything - a few select folders is enough for most people.