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OS X is HUGE!

J

JohnEZ

macrumors member
Original poster
Hi all,

I know this has been asked somewhere before, but searching for it produced such a wide range of results I couldn't filter it. Anyway.

I have a MacBook Pro with the 80 GB HD (Ok, 74GB after formatting...) which I just reformatted. I'm very pleased to have 55 GB of free space after huge video files took over 😛

Anyway, in thinking how nice it is, there's just still one little thing I'm wondering... where did the 1st 20 GB of my space go? Is there anything I can safely delete to regain some of that space? I know that I shouldn't quibble about it when I have 55GB left, but I'm very tight, with both money and storage space, apparently. 😛

-John
 
I was surpirsed at first too! I pushed mine up to 63GB though. First, get monolingual to delete languages. I deleted programs I'll never, ever use. Like comic life, sherlock, etc. I think you can do a custom reinstall, but it seemed to much trouble to me. (a.k.a. i'm lazy). If you're not going to use garageband you can delete those loops. And delete the printer drives you won't be using (they take almost 2GB). Use omnisweeper (I think that's the name) to see where everything is going
 
Tons of threads about this topic.

Download Delocalizer to remove other languages
Printer drivers you don't need
Garageband loops if you don't use

Go to terminal and type Format c:
 
Even with a FULL install of OS X, plus the Developer tools/X11, AND about 100 major apps, 500 huge photos/images, 200+ songs, utilities, maintenance and miscellaneous apps, my main system HD still weighs in at less than 20gb.......

but you can remove stuff yourself, or use utilities to do it for you.....

things like:

A) All languages you dont use
B) All printer drives except the ones for your current printer(s)
C) Duplicate files....ie more than one copy of documents & apps
D) ALL Classic/OS 9 files, if you dont need it
E) System, user, internet and other cache files etc etc.....yada, yada, yada

versiontracker, macupdate, Google etc R your freinds 😛
 
How much space do you have now? I'm ordering my MacBook soon and am planning on removing any extraneous files/apps I don't need, so a mental size frame would be cool.
 
If you're going to reinstall OS X... Maybe you should uncheck the additional languages from installing anyways.
 
X5-452 said:
How much space do you have now? I'm ordering my MacBook soon and am planning on removing any extraneous files/apps I don't need, so a mental size frame would be cool.
Click to expand...

i have a 60GB macbook (55GB after formatting i guess) and after deleting languages and printer drivers im down to 33GB now with 8GB of music and about 3GB of apple loops/idvd themes/not-using programs that i could delete. so thats about 11GB for OSX and apps...
 
just wondering, if you go and delete the languages, lets just say you need one of them for any reason (although I cant think of one off the top of my head), is there any way to get them back??
 
If you remove (or don't install) the stuff mentioned above plus any apps you don't need, OSX can be pretty slim.
The 10.3.9 install I have on my Pismo is around 2GB.
 
There is a neat way to recover significant amounts of space on Macosxhints without having to delete files.
Hard drive space is still a premium on laptops, and media files can eat a lot of that space. Here's a little trick to minimize the space taken up by applications that are not used frequently. It's a simple idea -- put the individual applications on individual compressed disk images using Disk Utility. Then create a folder for the disk image, and put an alias (pointing to the application on the image) in the folder with it. Store this folder in your Applications folder.
Click to expand...

There are a few caveats relating to Updates, but these are covered in the original article.
 
I know this defeats the OP's question, but you could buy an external Hdd. I saw a 300gb one for $160 at BestBuy not too long ago.
 
chairguru22 said:
i have a 60GB macbook (55GB after formatting i guess)
Click to expand...
This brings up yet another source of confusion for people with new computers who think the OS is eating up more space than it is--when they say "80GB" drive, the OS reports that as about 75GB. So 5GB of your space, in a manner of speaking, never existed.

The reason has been covered dozens of times on this forum and elsewhere, but basically hard drive sizes as sold (the numbers given by the manufacturers) don't use quite the same calculation as the OS does. A "manufacturer GB" is 10^9 bytes, while an "OS GB" (Mac and Windows) is 2^30 bytes. As a result, drives "appear" smaller in the size reported by the OS, although both numbers are technically correct.

It isn't formatting that eats the space, though--that's a few megabytes at absolute most.
 
Makosuke said:
This brings up yet another source of confusion for people with new computers who think the OS is eating up more space than it is--when they say "80GB" drive, the OS reports that as about 75GB. So 5GB of your space, in a manner of speaking, never existed.

The reason has been covered dozens of times on this forum and elsewhere, but basically hard drive sizes as sold (the numbers given by the manufacturers) don't use quite the same calculation as the OS does. A "manufacturer GB" is 10^9 bytes, while an "OS GB" (Mac and Windows) is 2^30 bytes. As a result, drives "appear" smaller in the size reported by the OS, although both numbers are technically correct.

It isn't formatting that eats the space, though--that's a few megabytes at absolute most.
Click to expand...

i see... still dont have 60 though 😉
 
How much RAM does OS X use? I just read an article stating that Vista uses "16 GB of space and 700MB of RAM" and wondered how OS X compared.
 
ready2switch said:
How much RAM does OS X use? I just read an article stating that Vista uses "16 GB of space and 700MB of RAM" and wondered how OS X compared.
Click to expand...

512MB of RAM is the minimum for it to be fully usable. However you can get by on less. I have 512 on my laptop and 3GB of my powermac. So it depends on what you use of course.*


*OS X 10.4 Tiger used
 
joebells said:
my girlfriends g5 imac uses the whole 2 gigs she has installed
Click to expand...

I'm constantly on 1GB as well (out of 1.5)

And for the original poster, you don't loose space by formatting, the drives are measured in bytes...drives say 1000 bytes = 1KB although your OS sees 1KB as 1024 Bytes 😉
 
Platform said:
And for the original poster, you don't loose space by formatting, the drives are measured in bytes...drives say 1000 bytes = 1MB although your OS sees 1MB as 1024 Bytes 😉
Click to expand...
You lose a bit, and back in the days the hard drives were 20 or 40 MB then it was actually noticeable... nowadays not so...

Also: 1MB = 1 000 000 bytes for HDs and 1024 *1024 bytes for the OS... 😉
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
You lose a bit, and back in the days the hard drives were 20 or 40 MB then it was actually noticeable... nowadays not so...

Also: 1MB = 1 000 000 bytes for HDs and 1024 *1024 bytes for the OS... 😉
Click to expand...

Back then it did matter, yes.

And sorry for the mix up up K and M...hehe (1000 and a million not a big deal right ? 🙁 ...it is sorry)
 
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