Fresh install of OSX

[BeefUK]

I've just bought a mac mini (core solo) which only has a 60GB hard drive, I was wondering if I do a fresh install of OSX will save much (if any) space by removing applications I do not need.

From my windows days I was able to do a fresh install and remove programs which I do not want on my system and save on some hard drive space.

Any comments would be great!

 

[plinden]

I've just bought a mac mini (core solo) which only has a 60GB hard drive, I was wondering if I do a fresh install of OSX will save much (if any) space by removing applications I do not need.

From my windows days I was able to do a fresh install and remove programs which I do not want on my system and save on some hard drive space.

Any comments would be great!

No need to reinstall. Just drag the application from Applications to the Trash, and empty the Trash. This may leave behind some personal settings but that never amounts to more than a couple kB.

However, you really won't clear much disk space, except with the iWork demo (about 1.6GB I believe) since individual apps themselves aren't very large. Most disk space is taken up with GarageBand loops and the iLife suite themes (a total of about 5GB under /Library/Application Support and /Library/Audio/Apple Loops) and printer drives (about 1.5GB)

Download and install WhatSize to see what directories are using up most space. That'll give you a better idea of what to remove. Be careful though not to remove necessary system files, especially those in directories that start with lower case letters, like "private" or "var"

 

[panoz7]

If every gig is precious (and on a 60 gb drive they might be) I'd go ahead and do a reinstall. It's relatively painless and you can choose exactly what you want.

The largest space savings (as plinden noted) can be found by deleting Garageband Loops, the iWork trial, iDVD templates, and iMovie. I don't do any video work so I removed all of those. One of the great things about a mac though is how well those programs work though, so if you're new to the OS I'd recomend at least playing around with them before you get rid of them.

Additional savings can come from removing printer drivers and extra languages you don't need. My university only uses HP printers, and that's all I've got at home, so I got rid of all the other drivers. Additionally, I only speak english and french, so I removed the rest of the languages. I think those saved about a gig. There's a program out there called monolingual that will remove those automatically. When I tried it on my old macbook it somehow managed to destroy rosetta. I found doing a OS reinstall to be much simpler, and gave me exactly what I wanted. The whole process took about an hour.

If you remove almost everything you can get the total space taken up by OS X to about 5 or 6 gigs.

Hope that helped.

 

[ChickenSwartz]

You can save a huge amount of HD space (especially compared to 60GB) by doing a reinstall.

I agree, go ahead. It is very easy and fairly quick.

 

[WildCowboy]

There's a program out there called monolingual that will remove those automatically. When I tried it on my old macbook it somehow managed to destroy rosetta.

Yes, the default Monolingual behavior program destroys Rosetta. You can avoid this by unchecking everything in the Architectures pane. Alternatively, you can use Delocalizer...it's a few years old, but I've heard of Intel Mac users have success with it, so you might want to look into it.

 

[BeefUK]

great, thanks for the quick replies. I've downloaded the what size program a few of you recommended and it's really useful. Will decide whether to do a new install over next few days. Prob depends on how much time I have. I don't really mind doing a reinstall if it will save me space, but at least I know which items I can delete if I am short on space.