Cant boot up cos my start up disk is full!!!

[shiftymatt]

Hello all,

I rather stupidly ignored the warnings about the start up disk being full and obviously (with 20/20 hindsight) it appears there isnt enough free space to start the computer, it just gets to the grey screen with the apple logo and thats it.
I have a usb external hard drive and was wondering if it is possible to start up with that instead. Any suggestion will be much appreciated!

 

[eluk]

Boot from the install DVD and then clean up from there.

 

[t0mat0]

Or presumably use Firewire cable, link to another Mac, use your Mac as an external hard drive, get rid of some things or move them over, then bring them back when you've solved the space issue.

 

[Kelly the Dude]

That's funny, I've loaded my startup disk down to nothing many times, and I've never had a problem with startup. Photoshop would do nothing, and a lot of apps wouldn't launch, but it would at least boot.

Does that happen a lot when you guys run down your disk, or is this just unusual?

 

[sickmacdoc]

Hello all,

I rather stupidly ignored the warnings about the start up disk being full and obviously (with 20/20 hindsight) it appears there isnt enough free space to start the computer, it just gets to the grey screen with the apple logo and thats it.
I have a usb external hard drive and was wondering if it is possible to start up with that instead. Any suggestion will be much appreciated!

You certainly can start up from the USB external if all the following conditions have been met:

1. You are using an Intel based Mac
2. It has been formatted by a Mac as Mac OS Extended and has a GUID partition map
3. OSX has been installed on it

Items 2 and 3 can be done after booting up from an OSX installer disk easy enough, but item 1 is a deal killer if you don't have an Intel based Mac. On the other hand if you have a PPC based Mac you could boot from the external if it were a FireWire connected drive (with an APM partition map scheme).

Now as to the problem, I doubt that space is the issue as far as what you described realistically, though nothing is impossible. Start up from an installer disk and use the Disk Utilities installed on it (from the system menus at the opening screen of the installation process) and run a "Repair Disk" on your startup drive first to see what that finds.

 

[shiftymatt]

Sadly I dont have an Intel based Mac (powerbook G4) and with all the moving to and fro from uni I cant seem to find the recovery or OS X start up disks!
Is this going to be a case of taking it to an apple shop?