What can I safely delete to create much needed HD space?

[The Grood]

My 2 year old 250GB iMac core duo came with 50GB of HD space already spoken for. Now I'm down to the last 40GB but still have 50 movies to rip.

I use it for movies, photos, music and mostly word based work, spreadsheets diaries etc. I know there's all sorts of techy stuff in there I'll never need.

So what can I SAFELY delete to create more space for ripped DVDs?

eg don't need multiple languages, drivers, help files etc. Why do I still have System 9? I'm hoping to dump maybe 20GB+ of useless stuff to make more room for movies...

Any obvious candidates?

 

[czachorski]

Foreign language and printer drivers. I know how not to install them, but not sure how to erase them.

If you are building up a large collection of media, why not consider at external HD? You can grab 500 GB these days for close to $100.

 

[GoCubsGo]

You definitately want to uninstall the languages you don't need using Monolingual. If you're not using all iLife Apps then you can do away with those. Otherwise Macs don't really have much (if any) bloatware.

 

[rolex54]

well there is no way you will be able to dump 20GB's
Foreign languages take up about 5 and printer drivers about 2GB
thats just about the only things you can erase

you should really look into an external hard drive
because with 50 movies to rip you are gonna need some serious space depending on how you are ripping them
MacTheRipper makes about 8GB files for 1 DVD
while handbrake is still about 1GB for 1 DVD

 

[vanmacguy]

Garageband takes up a lot of space. If you've already used 50Gb though and you're not sure where, I'd download Disk Inventory X and let it run on your drive. It will show you a graphical representation of what files are taking up all the space. It's free and really good. I use it at work and at home to see what's being greedy.

If you're using Final Cut, the sound files take up Gigabytes of space too. They're just huge.

Anyway, try Disk Inventory X and do some spring cleaning.

Cheers.

 

[The Grood]

Thanks for all the suggestions... will give them a go.

External hard drive could be the solution... spose I just want to make the most of what I've got.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Thanks for all the suggestions... will give them a go.

External hard drive could be the solution... spose I just want to make the most of what I've got.

Well I believe you'll find some performance improvement by ensuring you don't fill that internal too much. So I've heard.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

If you have that many movies left to rip then its time to get an external. You can get a 500gig drive for not much. Check out Buy.com