Mac mini is running out of HD space

[Morod]

Hi all,
Our daughter's Mac mini is running out of hard drive space and we want to get some of it back.
She's running Snow Leopard and has an external drive for Time Machine.
We're not a tech-savvy group, but are there any ways to either free up space on her internal drive by deleting unnecessary items or by transferring applications to her external drive (while still being able to access them)?
If she were to transfer say iTunes or iPhoto to her external drive, should she first partition that drive for these specific applications?
If you could help with detailed directions it would be great.
Thanks!

 

[benwiggy]

No partitioning needed: yes, you can move iPhoto and iTunes Libraries to external drives.
There are many webpages with the details of how to point the apps to the new locations.

Make sure you have ANOTHER external drive to backup these files. You can't backup to the same device.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Either buy another disk to put data on, or a bigger disk to replace the TM one (Or, upgrade the internal disk but thats a lot more hassle)

Disk is cheap, when you accidentally erase something, or lose all your music or photos because you copied it to your TM disk and so didn't do backups any more to save $50, you'll be SARRRY !

 

[Morod]

Thanks for your help!
Tumbleweed666, a great idea to use separate drives. Just in case. Thank you for the suggestion, one I wouldn't have thought of.
Morod