Startup Disk Full

[bigandy]

I got a phonecall from my dad last night, who's managed, somehow, to completely stuff up his Mac Mini's hard drive. He's not a computer genius, and I'm 500 miles away, so I can't plug in my PowerBook and, using target disk mode, clear some stuff off.

My question is, is there any easy way to remove a few files to get the thing to start up and log in? It's so full it's taking hours to start up, and won't log in.

He's tempted to just buy another mini, but I'd like to know if that could be avoided...


Thanks

 

[4409723]

I got a phonecall from my dad last night, who's managed, somehow, to completely stuff up his Mac Mini's hard drive. He's not a computer genius, and I'm 500 miles away, so I can't plug in my PowerBook and, using target disk mode, clear some stuff off.

My question is, is there any easy way to remove a few files to get the thing to start up and log in? It's so full it's taking hours to start up, and won't log in.

He's tempted to just buy another mini, but I'd like to know if that could be avoided...


Thanks

It can be avoided and that's a ridiculous solution.

On my set up it would be easy to fix this problem. I have 4 partitions, two with Mac OS X systems on them. I would boot off one install and use that to clean the other. It can be dangerous for a new user to go around deleting files they don't understand. I presume you only have one partition and therefore you can't boot off another. He made need somebody with a little more understanding to clear it off for him and as it may not be that simple.

After thinking about it for a minute another way that may be beyond a novice is to start in single user mode and delete some larger files using the command line.

 

[HiRez]

Can you use SSH to get into his command-line? First I'm not sure if single-user mode allows SSH, and second you'd probably have to unblock the SSH firewall port first (assuming it's active) for it to work. But that way you could poke around yourself. Something is weird though, it's hard for me to believe your dad has completely filled a fairly new hard drive up. It must be either tons of ripped CDs, or most likely video. Does he have a FireWire camera?

 

[rjphoto]

I got a phonecall from my dad last night, who's managed, somehow, to completely stuff up his Mac Mini's hard drive. He's not a computer genius, and I'm 500 miles away, so I can't plug in my PowerBook and, using target disk mode, clear some stuff off.

My question is, is there any easy way to remove a few files to get the thing to start up and log in? It's so full it's taking hours to start up, and won't log in.

He's tempted to just buy another mini, but I'd like to know if that could be avoided...


Thanks

Could he just get an external hard drive and copy the stuff off of it he wants to keep?

I was going to offer to go check it out for him, but if he's 500 miles from you in Scottland I don't think he could afford my house call charge. (Travel expences from Atlanta and an hourly fee...)

 

[bigandy]

thanks for your replies guys. i tried to SSH in, but i couldn't. because the last time i was there i locked it down. oops.

i've just spoken to him and he's just ordered 23 (!) minis for his business, so that's that sorted. i pointed him at a 6-6 pin firewire cable and he's sorted using target disk mode.

thanks for the callout offer too, but i think it'd be cheaper for me to drive down and back, despite the fact that petrol is now topping £1 a litre! ($1.80 a liter, or about 4 times the price of gas in the USA!)

 

[Dreadnought]

pop in the start up cd and let him start up with that. Let him throw away some things that aren't worth saving (movies, things that are burned on a cd, etc). Then you should have enough room to start up again.

 

[4409723]

pop in the start up cd and let him start up with that. Let him throw away some things that aren't worth saving (movies, things that are burned on a cd, etc). Then you should have enough room to start up again.

I thought about that but the Mac OS X install disks don't have the finder, do they?