Hard drive full help!

[wrinkster22]

Hi,
I have all 250 gb of my ssd full. I checked the normal things like back ups and I don't think thats why. I don't have much stuff on it. How can I free up space? Thanks.

 

[GGJstudios]

Freeing up drive space in Mac OS X

If you're wondering what "Other" category in the Lion/ML storage tab is about, this may help explain:

What is this "Other" in the storage tab? What is eating my space​

For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:

• Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
  
  
• For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion or later, space may be consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled.
  
  OS X: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs​
  
  
• Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
  
  
• Check the System Memory tab in Activity Monitor to check page outs and swap used. If swap used is significant, restart your computer and track that value under your normal workload. If you have significant page outs under normal use, you could benefit from more RAM.
  
  
• Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
  
• Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
  
  
• Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
  
  
• Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:

• Encrypted drive
• Time Machine backup files and needed disk repair
• App filling log file
• App or file was 89GB
• Drive needed to be re-indexed
• Time Machine backup file
• Large app cache file
• Garageband files and video podcasts
• Oversized email being duplicated
• Another email issue
  18.45EB of movies shown

How OS X and iOS report storage capacity

 

[dangerfish]

http://whatsizemac.com
Great app to do exactly what you need.
Also, empty your trash.

 

[stchman]

Hi,
I have all 250 gb of my ssd full. I checked the normal things like back ups and I don't think thats why. I don't have much stuff on it. How can I free up space? Thanks.

Do you have a HUGE music, video, pictures library?

Normal OS X ML install takes up ~20GB of drive space. Try using CleanMyMac 2. You can get it over at http://www.macheist.com for $9.99 with PathFinder. Only 1 day left.

 

[GGJstudios]

Try using CleanMyMac 2.

I would not recommend using CleanMyMac or any of its variants, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. Here's a recent example. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​

 

[stchman]

There are numerous online publications that give CleanMyMac good reviews including CNET, MacWorld, MacNews, Tucows.

I've been using OS X for over 9 months now and IMO it's not the perfection that people tout. It's pretty good, but I give Ubuntu props over it.

 

[GGJstudios]

There are numerous online publications that give CleanMyMac good reviews including CNET, MacWorld, MacNews, Tucows.

Online reviews are quite different from users' actual experiences. Everyone knows that reviewers can be bought or influenced. Users experiences are far more likely to give a balanced view.

 

[stchman]

Online reviews are quite different from users' actual experiences. Everyone knows that reviewers can be bought or influenced. Users experiences are far more likely to give a balanced view.

While there is something to what you have said, I also think that MANY users out there don't use the software properly, don't know what they are doing, etc. I can't recall how many times I've had people say "This application sucks, it doesn't do this properly, it doesn't do that at all, it screwed up my computer, blah, blah, blah". It's usually the case that they did it 100% wrong, so I take it with a grain of salt when someone on a forum says something messed their system up.

 

[GGJstudios]

While there is something to what you have said, I also think that MANY users out there don't use the software properly, don't know what they are doing, etc. I can't recall how many times I've had people say "This application sucks, it doesn't do this properly, it doesn't do that at all, it screwed up my computer, blah, blah, blah". It's usually the case that they did it 100% wrong, so I take it with a grain of salt when someone on a forum says something messed their system up.

You're absolutely right in saying that many problems may be the result of user errors. However, there have been so many reports of problems with these particular apps that it's appropriate to warn users about them, especially since such apps are unnecessary at best and at worst, potentially problematic.

 

[Carouser]

While there is something to what you have said, I also think that MANY users out there don't use the software properly, don't know what they are doing, etc. I can't recall how many times I've had people say "This application sucks, it doesn't do this properly, it doesn't do that at all, it screwed up my computer, blah, blah, blah". It's usually the case that they did it 100% wrong, so I take it with a grain of salt when someone on a forum says something messed their system up.

The flip side is that I think that many users out there aren't sensitive to what software does, so they say "it worked fine, no problems whatsoever", when they wrecked something that won't show up until a month down the road, or when they don't care about altering things which other people find very important.

 

[dbroncos78087]

Can you post a rough breakdown of the storage page of your System Info?

> About this Mac > More Info > Storage

 

[mservin21]

same problem!!

i am new to the forum and a new mac air user ( 4 months) i was downloading music and i got a mssg that said my start up disk is full, i checked my system info and i have only used 84 gig and have 120 gig free, i was wondering why did i get that message? is there like a separate start up storage that i could clear up? fyi i was downloading a large amount of music at once but not enough to fill up 120 gig) i would appreciate your help

 

[GGJstudios]

i am new to the forum and a new mac air user ( 4 months) i was downloading music and i got a mssg that said my start up disk is full, i checked my system info and i have only used 84 gig and have 120 gig free, i was wondering why did i get that message? is there like a separate start up storage that i could clear up? fyi i was downloading a large amount of music at once but not enough to fill up 120 gig) i would appreciate your help

Read the 2nd post in this thread.

 

[opinio]

Hi,
I have all 250 gb of my ssd full. I checked the normal things like back ups and I don't think thats why. I don't have much stuff on it. How can I free up space? Thanks.

Try disk repair from the recovery drive.

 

[wrinkster22]

Have to thank you all, GGJ's tricks helped me.