Hard drive almost full - What can be deleted in Library?

Hey all,

Well, a little about me, I'm a proficient computer user, however, in my semi-recent switch to Mac, I am going through the learning curve of the ins and outs of Mac OS X. I'm a video and audio editor and do a lot of graphic design work as well.

So, I have a 320GB (~300GB usable) drive with Mac OS 10.5.8 and a whole lot of software installed. This is a production machine, so I don't want to do anything experimental with it. Hopefully someone with expertise in the area of cleaning cache and needless files will drop by this thread.

Here's the basic rundown of what's on the drive:
/Library = 62GB
/Apps = 22GB
/Users.../Library = 87GB
/Users.../Docs&Desktop&Music&Movies&Pictures = 90GB
Other = ~20GB
Free space = ~20GB

I have plenty of external drive space, so I can move a lot of the User stuff off and clear it up for now, but I just can't understand why the Libraries are so big. But this is because I don't know that much about Mac OS X.

Are there any no brainer places to clean cache and unnecessary files?

I have read around a bit and so I am not going to be poking around in the Libraries unless I know what I'm doing. I'm cautious because like I said, this is a production machine.

Thanks!

-aggie- said:

You post screen shots or list what is in those Library directories. Something is very wrong. I suspect a log file or a temporary folder of your videos that can be deleted.

Click to expand...

OK, well since you said something was wrong, I dug around further and found 77GB of audio cache in the Adobe Soundbooth folder. We've never cleared that out, so it makes sense that it would be large. Yikes! I'm going to dig around in Soundbooth settings to see if I can set the cache disk to external.

Like spinnerlys said, I think the other /Library folder is legitimately large, because FCStudio comes with lots of generic samples and stuff.

WOW, I feel so much lighter now. Think I'll go run a mile.

Thanks aggie!