I have an iMac running Mac OSX 10.5.8, I know, going to upgrade after I repair this issue, with your help. My startup disc is full and this has obviously started giving me fits in many ways. Luckily I have had an external HDD attached through a USB port and have had "Time Machine" running in the background. Now I have been paranoid using the Apple system because I am an old Windows user and I cannot see allot of what is going on in the background. I had taken to putting new photos in folders on the desktop, like I would have done with Windows. I have also been copying them to the external HDD as I was afraid that I could never get them back without restoring using time machine, and I always worry what other changes are being made I cannot see. When I saw that my Startup Disc was full I began to drag files into the trash, mostly pictures, but some large files as well. The startup disc is still full because I have not emptied the trash, of course. NOW I am paranoid to empty the trash because I am afraid that the photos and files are linked into the external HDD and that it will delete access to them forever too. I can't be sure what is going on in the background. I drug a pic out of the trash and couldn't double click on it to see it, but when I tried to drag it to iPhoto it opened and I could see that I have allot of pics still in iPhoto even though I thought I drug all photos into the trash. Are all my pics in iPhoto, and even if I empty the trash, they are still on the hard drive. Maybe since they are in iPhoto, and on the desktop they are taking up double the startup disc space. I am seriously starting to hate apple now and I need your help to unravel this mess. I checked online to see about buying iCloud to put all my photos on the cloud and then delete, but I have to buy a newer operating system. I cannot do that until I resolve this disc space issue I am sure. For a moment I clicked on empty trash and it came up that there was some 270,000 files to delete and it was doing so very slowly, probably take days do empty the trash. there is not way I have that many files in the trash. Please help me as this is overwhelming at this time and I used to build computers and used Windows since DOS and 3.11 on floppy's.
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Startup Disc Full
- Thread starter Skorman
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- Eject the external drive.
- Disconnect its cable from the computer.
- Empty trash. This will only delete things that are on the disks still attached to the computer, i.e. your internal HD.
- Reconnect external drive. Does the Trash icon show anything in it?
p.s. Please use paragraphs. A Great Wall Of Text is hard to read, which means it's harded for someone to understand the problem.
Wall of text warning.
Please use the enter key to create paragraphs.
If you're worried about losing your files on the external drive then disconnect the drive before doing any of the work.
You're only option is to clear up enough space so OSX can run efficiently.
Please use the enter key to create paragraphs.
If you're worried about losing your files on the external drive then disconnect the drive before doing any of the work.
You're only option is to clear up enough space so OSX can run efficiently.
Yea, I tried to use the the return or enter key, and then it didn't indent, so I hit the tab key, as one might normally do, and it jumped clear out of the text box. I just opted to ramble on, rather than try and indent with the space bar at the beginning of every paragraph. Since it is obviously and issue, I will do so next time.
Thanks so much for the responses, I will try that approach. Still not sure if all my data is on the external HDD until I delete the files from the startup drive.
Do you have an answer on the iPhoto issue. Does this Apple computer install every picture I download onto my computer from an SD chip automatically, or do I have to tell it to load them into the iPhoto program every time, or have it set so that it automatically puts them in iPhoto? I do not like that function. It would be nice if it had a function which would show you all the photo's that have not been added into iPhoto yet, and you could then chose to upload them into that App/Program.
Thanks Again.
Norman
That's odd that the enter key is not working.
As for iPhoto, when you import them in, iPhoto store's them in its own library by default. So dragging pictures from an SD card into iPhoto means you have the photos sitting on your SD card and within the iPhoto library.
Likewise if you did that from your desktop, i.e., dragged images from the desktop to iPhoto - they would exist in two places.
In order to fully delete files, folders you need to empty the trash, otherwise you'll not clear up the space. As I and chown mentioned to be safe, disconnect your external drive before emptying it, just so you would have some peace of mind.
As for iPhoto, when you import them in, iPhoto store's them in its own library by default. So dragging pictures from an SD card into iPhoto means you have the photos sitting on your SD card and within the iPhoto library.
Likewise if you did that from your desktop, i.e., dragged images from the desktop to iPhoto - they would exist in two places.
In order to fully delete files, folders you need to empty the trash, otherwise you'll not clear up the space. As I and chown mentioned to be safe, disconnect your external drive before emptying it, just so you would have some peace of mind.
Huge Problem, lost file.
The computer is still emptying the trash, hours later it is down to 240,000 files. Looks like the files are still on the external hard drive, so I was happy. I clicked on a spreadsheet file that was on the desktop to do my bills, and a popup said this: "The Document, SAVINGS NUMBERS, is invalid. The index.XML file is missing." That is all that it will do. This file and none of its parts, as far as I know, were in the trash, but I cannot view this critical file. This will take me about a week to rebuild this spreadsheet, and will never be the same. I was tracking savings for months in advance for upcoming bills so that I would have the money in my checking account when those bills come due. The amount of work to rebuild this is mind numbing and this is totally uncalled for. Can't express how depressed and stressed I am over this. I looked and looked on the external hard drive for this file and it is not there. I had "Time Machine" set up to back up all my data every week or so. I also noticed that all my backups had disappeared as well, the only one was for today, just before I started emptying the trash, the second time, so some of those backed up files may have been lost. I never told the external hard drive to delete anything, ever. Why the Time Machine has defaulted to this at this critical moment is beyond baffling.
I had wanted to buy the iCloud and store all my data files there before deleting them from the hard drive and feeing up space, but, I had to upgrade my operating system from the OSX 10.5.8 to lion, or something first, but couldn't upgrade until I had made space on the hard drive.
I will most likely be going back to Windows based systems soon, and will never look at Apple again.
The computer is still emptying the trash, hours later it is down to 240,000 files. Looks like the files are still on the external hard drive, so I was happy. I clicked on a spreadsheet file that was on the desktop to do my bills, and a popup said this: "The Document, SAVINGS NUMBERS, is invalid. The index.XML file is missing." That is all that it will do. This file and none of its parts, as far as I know, were in the trash, but I cannot view this critical file. This will take me about a week to rebuild this spreadsheet, and will never be the same. I was tracking savings for months in advance for upcoming bills so that I would have the money in my checking account when those bills come due. The amount of work to rebuild this is mind numbing and this is totally uncalled for. Can't express how depressed and stressed I am over this. I looked and looked on the external hard drive for this file and it is not there. I had "Time Machine" set up to back up all my data every week or so. I also noticed that all my backups had disappeared as well, the only one was for today, just before I started emptying the trash, the second time, so some of those backed up files may have been lost. I never told the external hard drive to delete anything, ever. Why the Time Machine has defaulted to this at this critical moment is beyond baffling.
I had wanted to buy the iCloud and store all my data files there before deleting them from the hard drive and feeing up space, but, I had to upgrade my operating system from the OSX 10.5.8 to lion, or something first, but couldn't upgrade until I had made space on the hard drive.
I will most likely be going back to Windows based systems soon, and will never look at Apple again.