My hard drive is getting very full. I need to free up space, so looking for any advice where I can make some space...is there a "best approach" way to do this? Perhaps a list of items that are no longer needed after they serve a purpose, such as maybe the .dmg files? Anyway, any help would be appreciated.
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Can I delete .dmg files after app is installed?
- Thread starter Rob JJ
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.dmg is short for disc image. Think of them as inserting an install CD/DVD. Once the install is done, the CD/DVD has no other purpose and can go right back in its case.
Same goes for .dmg, once you're done, they have no use.
You can try using something like Disk Inventory X to see what is taking up space. From there you can ask us if some files/directories can be deleted/cleared
All very helpful answers. I think I'll start with DiskInv. X and go from there. Thank you all.
Have you backed up to an external disk lately? Time Machine will back your files up to the system disk if an external backup disk is not available. While this obviously does nothing to protect your data in the case of a disk failure, it is super-handy for accessing previous versions of a file when traveling, etc.
But it means that disk space can gradually disappear. The local backups are automatically cleared out when a proper external backup is performed. So, try that.
You might also try running Disk Utility to see if you have space lost to orphaned clusters, which can happen when software misbehaves. If some are found, boot into the recovery partition (IIRC that means holding cmd-R down from the start of the boot process), and use its Disk Utility application to repair the disk.
Good luck.
But it means that disk space can gradually disappear. The local backups are automatically cleared out when a proper external backup is performed. So, try that.
You might also try running Disk Utility to see if you have space lost to orphaned clusters, which can happen when software misbehaves. If some are found, boot into the recovery partition (IIRC that means holding cmd-R down from the start of the boot process), and use its Disk Utility application to repair the disk.
Good luck.
Since external drives are so cheap these days you might consider getting one on sale and using it as an archive disk. Copy stuff to it that you don't really need right now. If it's important, consider how you will back it up.