Ok, I'm running on a 15" Macbook Pro, Core Duo, 1GB Ram, with a 100 GB hard drive. System profiler is telling me my capacity is 92.84GB. I have 23.08GB remaining. Now granted... theres plenty of stuff on my computer such as a 20GB Music collection but heres my problem: My entire home folder only takes around 50GB. So i'm jus wondering...wheres all my other hd space and how do i get it back! the only thing I can think is its dedicated to virtual memory but i dont know. A little help please?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The space on my hard drive just pulled a Houdini
- Thread starter NavySEAL6
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
~20GB for the OS, preinstalled apps (iLife and whatnot) and other apps you've installed sounds about right. That's a huge home folder and a fair amount of music. You might just need to get an external hard drive.
Also, what's up with these threads popping up all of a sudden? That's the second one today.
Easy to explain 92.84 - 23.08 = 69.76. So you have about 70GB of "stuff". You say your home folder is 50GB. so you are asking what is the other 20GB. That would be Mac OS X and all the applications and their data. It sounds about right. No mystery it adds up.
You could remove the stuff you don't need. Like the trail version of iWork and MS Office and whatever else you don't think you will use
nice thanks for the tips guys...that space really adds up! Anyway, while we're here, what is the best external HDD to buy, or should I get an internal with enclosure, very confusing to me lol. I'd like one with firewire 400 so i could use it to boot mac if need be, and i'd also like some software that could just create an exact image of my mac's hd and update it once a week or so. Is there any programs like this?
External HDD is a personal preference, I personally like to stay away from Maxtors and stay with Seagates and Western Digitals (never had a problem with either of those drives in my day...)
About the backup software. I use Carbon Copy Cloner which is an excellent free backup utility. A lot of folks use Super Duper which has a few more features than Carbon Copy. It also has a very nice Smart update which shortens the backup time dramatically.
What you will learn from both of them though is that you most likely will want to avoid the "disk image" process. CCC prefers a bootable backup system that allows you to test your backup immediately with no damage to your actual system.
With whatever system you do end up using I highly suggest you thoroughly read the instructions and warnings because you can end up relying on a useless backup...