How do I find Harddrive useage?

[coffey7]

I looked and used help but I can't find out how much hard drive space I have used.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Select the drive icon and key Apple-I to get drive or folder info.

 

[Jaffa Cake]

Click on your hard drive and press Command-I – the info window that pops up will tell you the total capacity of the drive and how much space you've used and have got available. Alternatively, you could select 'Show item info' under View Options (you can find it under View in your Menubar). This'll show you the capacity of the drive and the total space remaining under the icon on your Desktop.

 

[coffey7]

thanks I started with 55.57 gb now I have 38.58 gb.oh my god what is taking all that space. All I have done is download a few programs and put 12 songs and 3 pictures.

 

[WildCowboy]

thanks I started with 55.57 gb now I have 38.58 gb.oh my god what is taking all that space. All I have done is download a few programs and put 12 songs and 3 pictures.

Do you mean that it's a 60 GB drive?

That sounds about right...a full install of Tiger and associated apps runs about 20 GB. You can reduce that dramatically by getting rid of iDVD themes, GarageBand loops, and printer drivers that you don't need. You can also use something like Monolingual to remove unneeded language support. All told, you can easily save 10 GB of space.

 

[coffey7]

Do you mean that it's a 60 GB drive?

That sounds about right...a full install of Tiger and associated apps runs about 20 GB. You can reduce that dramatically by getting rid of iDVD themes, GarageBand loops, and printer drivers that you don't need. You can also use something like Monolingual to remove unneeded language support. All told, you can easily save 10 GB of space.

I will try to rid myself of some unwanted programs. I have 60 gb but it only says 55.58 gb.

 

[WildCowboy]

I have 60 gb but it only says 55.58 gb.

Yes, that's because of the difference in the way hard drive sizes are marketed versus how many bytes they actually contain. (Google gigabytes and gibibytes for more info.)

 

[coffey7]

How do I find these programs to delete?

 

[WildCowboy]

You can use a program like WhatSize to look for big folders.

For instance, I only have iLife '05, but it still finds an iDVD folder of 1.45 GB (Applications/iDVD.app/Contents/Resources)...it's all themes for iDVD. If you're not doing a lot of DVD projects, you can get rid of all or most of these. iLife '06 has an even bigger folder of themes.

I also have a somewhat large folder of GarageBand sampler files (/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Sampler/Sampler Files)...1.34 GB in iLife '05. And another 1.91 GB of GarageBand loops in Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Apple Loops for GarageBand. I'm not really a GarageBand user, so I could get rid of these if I needed space.

And I've got 1.64 GB of printer drivers in Library/Printers, most of which I don't need.