Private Folders????

[sulu]

Hi

After searching the forum I still don't get what these private folders are. I did a 'what size' search and it found this: screen shot hopefully inserted below.
1. What are they?
2. Why are they so big?
3. Why are some protected and I can't even open them?
4. Can I delete them - if so how how?

Thanks

 

[mad jew]

The private folder is predominantly made up of your system's temporary files. There are ways to clear this folder, but the files will soon re-accumulate and there's no real benefit to having it empty.

 

[chuck brown]

what are the ways to clear that folder?

 

[funkychunkz]

Woah those sleepimages are big. I think this is the contents of your Ram stored on disk, so that the system can cut power to the RAM when it goes to sleep and still preserve whatever you had open, and not have to reboot.

Those folders are owned by the system, so unless you're an admin and in some cases the superuser (even higher ranked) you can't get access to them. Some maintenance apps give you the option to clean out these files, but you need to be running from an Administrator account.

Go to any mac software site and look for OnyX or Mainmenu.

 

[chuck brown]

i'm going to try and use the software mentioned, I hate to have such a huge amount of space like that used up