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Storage question on new (to me) MBA

A

achie25

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 2, 2005
336
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I just bought a 2013 MBA 13" i5/4GB/128GB

I got it from a guy on CL. It came with Applecare until next July. It was also loaded with iWork and Office.

My question is that I have been through the computer and it shows that I only have 76 GB free. What can I do to to see what is taking up all of the space? I wouldn't think that iWork and Office 11 would take up that much room.
 
Are you using Time Machine for backup? If you are, that stores some files in a hidden local backups area.

That aside, your space sounds about right. A default install with the OS and iLife apps takes up about 20GB... add MS Office to that plus some space the OS uses for swap space.... and you are in the neighborhood of that you are seeing.
 
You can check the storage window to see what proportion of disk space is used by apps, music, photos, video, backups, and "other".

"Other" refers to everything that the computer can't readily categorize. If this section seems to be taking up a lot of space, there are a number of different disk utilities available that will help you figure out where that storage space is going.

Here's what I've done to make the most of my 128 GB:
1 - Mail is set up so that all my mail is stored only on the server, rather than my Mac (this means you can't use Mail when you're offline, but it does save a ton of space ... and anyway, if I really need to check my mail when I'm away from home, I use my phone for that even if I happen to have my computer with me. I never check email on my computer unless I'm at home - and if I'm at home, the computer is online)
2 - All my media (iTunes and iPhoto) are stored on my wireless disk, and cloned to a portable drive in case I need to get at them when I'm away from home
3 - I save documents to iCloud instead of to my Mac. (Not sure if iCloud would work with Office, but if it doesn't then there are a lot of alternative cloud services out there, and most are free for the amount of storage you'd need for just documents)

These steps may be too restrictive for a lot of people, but personally I haven't noticed any difference in the actual useability of the computer .... except for the amount of free space I have all of a sudden :D
 
achie25 said:
I just bought a 2013 MBA 13" i5/4GB/128GB

I got it from a guy on CL. It came with Applecare until next July. It was also loaded with iWork and Office.

My question is that I have been through the computer and it shows that I only have 76 GB free. What can I do to to see what is taking up all of the space? I wouldn't think that iWork and Office 11 would take up that much room.
Click to expand...
If you're wondering what "Other" category in the storage tab is about, this may help explain: For space issues not explained by the above, there are a few things you can try, some of which may or may not apply:
  • Begin by restarting your computer as a first step. This sometimes resolves issues.
  • For Time Machine users on notebooks running Lion or later, space may being consumed by Time Machine local snapshots, which can be disabled by entering the following command in Terminal: sudo tmutil disablelocal.
  • Check to see if some of the space is being used by your sleepimage file.
  • Search with Finder to see if the space is being consumed by a very large file or several large files. Adjust the 50GB in the illustration to whatever size you deem appropriate.
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  • Use OmniDiskSweeper, JDisk Report, Disk Inventory X, DaisyDisk or GrandPerspective to see how space is being used on your drive. Some of these apps may show more detail than others, so try several.
  • Check your drive with Disk Utility: Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
  • Try re-indexing your drive: Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
Here are a few resolutions found by others with the same question:
 
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