New to Mac..hard drive full

[rha80]

I am new to Macs as I have my oldest sister's old Powerbook G4 since she got a new one for christmas.

How do I make room on the hard drive. It is full and I need to make some room.

How do I delete files or programs?
How do I move programs to an external HD?
What can be moved to the external?

Is there a way to tell where all of my space is being used up?


Thanks for your help/

 

[JediMeister]

IMO, unless you want to manually pick and choose every folder/file/application, the best thing to do is to erase & install that machine. Sure, you'll have to re-set up the network connection and a few other minor things, but that will preempt other problems you'll encounter down the line with your sister's name randomly popping up in Address Book and in other odd places throughout the system. Make sure that you have the install discs for any other applications and also the serial numbers if they require one.

P.S. I realize I didn't really answer your questions, I just recommended another course of action.

1) Deleting files and folders is fairly simple. Drag & drop to the Trash icon and then click & hold down on the icon until the Empty Trash dialogue comes up or go to the Finder menu in the upper left and under it pick Empty Trash.
2) You should leave the applications on the internal drive. Data on the other hand, like documents, pictures, music, can be stored externally.
3) Already kinda answered with part 2.

Seeing where all the space has gone is a bit of a moot point if you erase & install the computer, but WhatSize, Disk Inventory X, and GrandPerspective will do what you're looking for, if only a bit difficult to interpret correctly due to the graphical representations they have (not as pie charts sadly)

 

[finnschi]

To delete simply Drag and trop tp the recycle bin, when you are done deleting stuff just "ctrl click" or richt click on the recycle bin and than empty trash.

To delete applications, just take a look at the application folder in Finder, you can aslo just drag applications to the recycle bin!

To see how much space is used, you can either just take a look at the bar on the bottom of the finder it will show how much space is left on your harddrive! another option would be to start "disk utility" its in Applications/utilities!

To make sure the Applications are gone just check /username/application support and delte all the folders, corresponding to the apps you deleted


But as the other poster said, a total reinstall will be the best you can do, so you will have a totally NEW and CLEAN system!