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utoeid

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi,

I have an older iMac (purchased 2007) running snow leopard. today I received constant messages saying my start-up disk is full and wanted some "experienced" suggestions on what I should erase to make more room. I have deleted my trash, downloads and iPhoto trash but I am sure I need to look seriously at my content. my iMac is primarily for my photos & videos and I have external drives so any suggestions on stuff I can erase that is not necessary BEFORE i attempt to delete old files would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks all,
 

MarkMS

macrumors 6502a
Aug 30, 2006
992
0
Quick question. How big is your hard drive now? Reason I ask is if it's small ... you may not have many OS X related files to erase and might have to back up all the videos and photos and delete them from the iMac to make more room.

Also, check this application called GrandPerspective. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
It will help you visualize what is taking up all your space on the hard drive.
 

utoeid

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I have 3 GB of memory and to date have used upall of it. I cannot even put 1 jpg file anywhere on the harddrive. Before I start attacking my personal files to delete I wanted to know some general areas outside of trash that I can hit to free up space. I considered moving my photos and stuff to external drives but everyone at Apple suggests that I have another form of back-up because the externals fail too. So I am lost and nervous to start doing that and then be stuck with nothing.
 

SmilesLots

macrumors regular
Apr 30, 2010
176
0
SW Virginia
I have used a utility called Monolingual to free up disk space. Sometimes gigabytes. It gets id of the extra but unused languages.
 

BrianBaughn

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2011
9,616
2,392
Baltimore, Maryland
Your essential software can't be taking up the majority of your HD space, so the culprits must be documents, photos, music, or video.

It does sound like you need an external drive and backup solution. Your HD must be 250GB or 320GB if you bought the stock iMac in 2007.

Get a 2TB (2000GB) external USB drive, reformat/partition it into two partitions (say 500GB/1500GB...the amounts will actually be less). Use the 500GB partition for file storage and the larger one for backup. First, though, is get those files to the storage partition and deleted from the iMac.

Now, set up your Time Machine to use the larger partition to backup the iMac and the smaller partition.

I prefer to leave Time Machine "off" and do manual, overnight backups every week or so.

Your internal drive could be near end-of-life so it's important to get this backup going.

Newegg.com is an excellent place to find external drives.
 

dXTC

macrumors 68020
Oct 30, 2006
2,033
50
Up, up in my studio, studio
I have 3 GB of memory and to date have used upall of it. I cannot even put 1 jpg file anywhere on the harddrive. Before I start attacking my personal files to delete I wanted to know some general areas outside of trash that I can hit to free up space. I considered moving my photos and stuff to external drives but everyone at Apple suggests that I have another form of back-up because the externals fail too. So I am lost and nervous to start doing that and then be stuck with nothing.

How long has it been since you emptied Safari's cache? You might clear up a few MBs. The Empty Cache function is found in Safari's File menu.
 
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
30
located
I have 3 GB of memory and to date have used upall of it. I cannot even put 1 jpg file anywhere on the harddrive. Before I start attacking my personal files to delete I wanted to know some general areas outside of trash that I can hit to free up space. I considered moving my photos and stuff to external drives but everyone at Apple suggests that I have another form of back-up because the externals fail too. So I am lost and nervous to start doing that and then be stuck with nothing.

With "3GB of memory" you don't mean the RAM listed in (1), but the available HDD capacity listed in (2) and (3), do you?
MR_RAMorHDD_001.png


Btw, "memory" is not the same as "hard drive capacity":
What is Computer Memory? RAM vs Hard Drive
RAM vs. Hard Disk
 
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
30
located
oh, never seen those effects :)

Those are quite simple.
Make a screenshot via CMD+SHIFT+4, then SPACE.
Open the .png into PS and then use the Mask Tool (M) to copy the part you want the effect applied to.
Paste the copied part.
Open Blending Options
Drop Shadow: Distance set to 0, Size and Spread set to 5 and 10 or so
Outer Glow: play with it
Gradient Overlay: mostly the opacity is set to something "good".

Example .psd: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10644330/MR_example_guiding.psd
 
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