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How big is OS X?

geodome

geodome

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 22, 2006
32
0
London, UK
According to System Profiler,

Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 55.57 GB
Available: 36.37 GB

Approximately 20GB is consumed, but I never installed anything other than Neo Office. Is OS X really so big?
 
there's tons of space taken up by different languages and printer drivers. OSX installs alot of programs with it when it installs also. I wiped my girlfriends imac (g5) and reinstalled a pretty much basic osx install unchecking pretty much everything and it was only like 2 gigs or something like that.
 
There's a heap of preinstalled software - iLife (Garagebend is a big culprit here) iWork and Office test drives. There are also a load of drivers and languages that you can remove if you want (Monolingual or Delocaliser will take care of langages).

If you get rid of what you will never use, you can save a lot of space.
 
I recently did a fresh install on my MBP using the restore media and the install size was 15GB. So yeah an OS X install is large, but it isn't bloat since you do get a lot of interesting stuff to play with, including 3rd party apps. You could remove languages, fonts, printer drivers etc and save a few GB though.
 
I once got 10.3 on a 2 gb drive, but if you have a new computer it should also include iLife (10GB), iWork (2Gb) Standard OS X 10.4 install (4GB) then there is all sorts of apps that Apple throws on there and what ever documents you have.
 
joebells said:
... reinstalled a pretty much basic osx install unchecking pretty much everything and it was only like 2 gigs or something like that.
Click to expand...

Instead of reinstalling OS X, is there a better way to strip unnecessary components? 20GB is very big for an OS. I expect it to be less than 10GB.
 
Windows XP = This Big: |||||||||||||
OS X = This Big: |||||||||||||||||||||||
Windows Vista = This Big: ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 
I was nervous when I bought my MacBook because it said there was only 36 GB left. I instantly went to the System folder and deleted languages and printers and Gragaeband, iDVD, iMovie, etc.

I now have a like 49 GB HD!
 
I reduced mine down to like 9GB instead of almost 20GB. :) :) I deleted garage band since it's so easy to reinstall it and I have not the slightest clue how to use it :)
 
geodome said:
Instead of reinstalling OS X, is there a better way to strip unnecessary components? 20GB is very big for an OS. I expect it to be less than 10GB.
Click to expand...

Reinstalling is probably the best way because you make sure to get rid of associated files for the different apps. For example, if you choose to just delete an app, you might find some of that app's support files and get rid of those, but you may miss some. Reinstalling will give you the tidiest installation, but you can definitely do it just by deleting things from your current install. And be sure to use a program like Monolingual to get rid of unneeded languages.

I've got Tiger running on an old iBook with a 10 GB hard drive...I got rid of just about everything I could, including all iLife apps except iTunes, and I've got the install under 3.5 GB.
 
Is there a way to custom install in the Tiger installer? I've done it a couple of times and although I wasn't looking for a custom option, one wasn't obviously available. Or do you have to use localizer etc and manually delete garage band?
 
geodome said:
Instead of reinstalling OS X, is there a better way to strip unnecessary components? 20GB is very big for an OS. I expect it to be less than 10GB.
Click to expand...
The actual OS takes up only a couple of GB's.

The other crap is drivers, apps and (the biggie) iLife.
 
OS X + iLife takes about 13GB on my machine
OS X - Printer drivers, XCode stuff, base stuff, all defaults didn't install extra font languages
iLife - iLife takes about 7+GB - iDVD and GarageBand take up the most space. GB takes up 2.5GB with all the loops, iDVD takes up about 2.5GB with all of its stuff.
 
interpolic said:
Is there a way to custom install in the Tiger installer? I've done it a couple of times and although I wasn't looking for a custom option, one wasn't obviously available. Or do you have to use localizer etc and manually delete garage band?
Click to expand...

During the install at a point or two theres a button over to the left that says options or customize or something along those lines you just click it and then check and uncheck the things you want installed. One thing that I wasn't sure about was cpu help files or some option along those lines. I think I ended up installing them but I don't know what they do. What little I found on them online kind of referenced them as help files but I'm not sure.
 
The 10.4 standard installer is just shy of 5 GB if you install all of the printer drivers and language files.

iLife adds another 7 GB with Garageband loops. iPhoto alone is around 500 MB.

Windows XP comes in just over 2 GB.
 
Eidorian said:
The 10.4 standard installer is just shy of 5 GB if you install all of the printer drivers and language files.

iLife adds another 7 GB with Garageband loops. iPhoto alone is around 500 MB.

Windows XP comes in just over 2 GB.
Click to expand...

XP do you get:
A calendar app like iCal?
A Unix-based terminal?
Networking utilities for tracert, ping, etc. - in a GUI?
Integrated applications -e.g. Mail and Address Book and iCal?
Grapher?
Digital Color Meter?
Spotlight?
Automator?

---Anything like those in Windows?

Some, in some ways, most, no. =P Sorry, but its awesome that iCal comes with OS X, and Calendar is in Win 3.11 - it came with it - , but why do you have to buy a Calendar program for Windows 9x+. -- Sorry. I know I love OS X *hugs iBook*
 
slooksterPSV said:
XP do you get:
A calendar app like iCal?
A Unix-based terminal?
Networking utilities for tracert, ping, etc. - in a GUI?
Integrated applications -e.g. Mail and Address Book and iCal?
Grapher?
Digital Color Meter?
Spotlight?
Automator?

---Anything like those in Windows?

Some, in some ways, most, no. =P Sorry, but its awesome that iCal comes with OS X, and Calendar is in Win 3.11 - it came with it - , but why do you have to buy a Calendar program for Windows 9x+. -- Sorry. I know I love OS X *hugs iBook*
Click to expand...
Uh...where did I say Windows was superior due to its smaller full installation size?
 
I usually remove Garage Band, its loops and whatever else I do not need, and if you run Delocalizer (Google it) you will get back about 2GB from not having languages installed that you don't need.

EDIT: Delocalizer does not work with Craptel processors, though, I think.
 
iGary said:
I usually remove Garage Band, its loops and whatever else I do not need, and if you run Delocalizer (Google it) you will get back about 2GB from not ahaving languages installed that you don't need.
Click to expand...
I honestly just say do a reinstallation and don't install those things in the first place.

Monolingual does.
 
Virtualball said:
I instantly went to the System folder and deleted languages and printers and Gragaeband, iDVD, iMovie, etc.
Click to expand...

I might as well delete everything. LOL.

Thing to delete:
- iDVD (I don't have a DVD writer, 69.6mb)
- iWork (I use Neo Office, 1.95GB)
- MS Office 2004 Test Drive for Mac (30d evaluation, I use Neo Office, 330MB)
- GarageBand (I am no musician, 100.4MB)
- iMovie HD (I don't edit movies, 78MB)
- Comic Life (18.4MB)

Things not sure
- will uninstalling iDVD affect the DVD player program?
- what is OmniOutliner (35.9MB)?

The total size of my application folder is 4.8GB. It suggests that OS X itself occupies the remainder 15GB. Trimming the OS is something that I have never done before. What contributes to such a bulky OS?

I really want to keep the system files less than 10GB. 20GB is 1/3 of my HDD.
 
geodome

Most of the Garageband space is taken up by the instrument libraries. They are stored in the /Library/Application Support/Garageband folder and show as taking 1.35GB on my iMac.
 
slooksterPSV said:
XP do you get:
Some, in some ways, most, no. =P Sorry, but its awesome that iCal comes with OS X, and Calendar is in Win 3.11 - it came with it - , but why do you have to buy a Calendar program for Windows 9x+. -- Sorry. I know I love OS X *hugs iBook*
Click to expand...

You love OS X because of iCal? Wow!
 
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