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What is taking up my HDD storage space?

R

Ravich

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I am using a macbook, so I hope this is a reasonable place to post this. I have a feeling that when I figure this out I'm going to feel silly. I have a 250GB HDD in my early 2008 macbook, and I am wondering what is taking up all of the space. Here is what I have accounted for (all of these values are rounded up within reason, for the record):

10GB - Applications
20GB - Desktop
30GB - Documents
50GB - Downloads (yes, it is supposed to be that big)
10GB - Library
40GB - Music

Movies, pictures, etc, all other folders are negligible size. This adds up to 160GB, plus I figure the OS installation is 15GB max? That would be 175GB out of 230 or so. Why do I only have 6GB of free space, then? I must be missing something really basic...
 
Downloaded grand perspective and in the attempt to get it to scan the entire disk realized I hadnt looked in the macintosh HD folder itself.

There is a library folder at about 20GB (in addition to the 10GB library folder in my home folder). Not sure about this one...

There is also a folder titled "Previous Systems" with 2 folders of about 16GB, one dated late 2009, another from early 2010. What purpose do these serve? Can I delete them?
 
"Clean my Mac" should free up a few gigs and could be a lot more, getting rid of some system junk and other stuff. < I know that's an amazing description lol


I think it's like $20 or $30 bucks? Or maybe free, idk. It's nice to have, at the least for deleting extra language files.
 
DWBurke811 said:
"Clean my Mac" should free up a few gigs and could be a lot more, getting rid of some system junk and other stuff. < I know that's an amazing description lol


I think it's like $20 or $30 bucks? Or maybe free, idk. It's nice to have, at the least for deleting extra language files.
Click to expand...

OP avoid clean my mac. its known to slow the system down. AVOID it
 
CleanMyMac works great. There are other ones that are shady, but CleanMyMac works pretty good.

Depending on how much RAM you have, there's also a copy of your RAM on your HD. (4 or 8 gigs)

You can also try the program WhatSize to see what's taking up all your space.
 
NZed said:
OP avoid clean my mac. its known to slow the system down. AVOID it
Click to expand...

You run it and then close the app. Maybe if you had it scanning all the time or something it would, but when it's closed nothing runs in the background. My Mac is fast as balls, and balls are really, really fast.

If you don't know what you're talking about it's best not to say anything...
 
I have heard bad things about CleanMyMac in that it deletes a lot more than you bargained for. Personally, I would avoid it. I do wish there was an easier way to uninstall applications. I know that most applications are contained in one file or folder, but some are not and can be a pain to completely remove as I found out with Chrome last night!

As for your problem, do you have applications that you have possibly deleted and missed some stray files? That's what would have happened to me with Chrome if I wouldn't have searched to be sure that I was completely uninstalling the thing. Very frustrating!
 
I'm not willing to spend money on an app to clear up space, since now all of the storage is accounted for.


Does anyone know if the "previous systems" folder can go? I have no idea how long it's been there or what it does.
 
kappaknight said:
CleanMyMac works great. There are other ones that are shady, but CleanMyMac works pretty good.
Click to expand...

One app that I would not recommend, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere, is CleanMyMac. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much.

You don't need "cleaner" apps to keep your Mac running efficiently. Mac OS X does a good job of maintaining itself, without the need for 3rd party apps. Some have successfully used apps like Monolingual to remove unwanted languages and architectures to free up drive space.

Be aware that extreme caution should be exercised when using such apps, as deleting certain languages or architectures can create significant problems. At best, deleting these things may buy you 1-2GB of drive space, but will not improve your system's performance. If you're not certain about what you're doing, don't delete anything. The small drive space savings are not worth the risk of potential problems.
 
Clean my Mac has worked flawless for me on my laptop and my girlfriends, haven't had any problems with it "cleaning too much." It even warns you about deleting things that may cause problems, which I still chose to delete on mine, but left on my girlfriends, and everything has been flawless. While I do not remember exactly how many GBs of junk it deleted, but I remember it being closer to 5GB-7GB.

No matter the software or hardware, people will find a way to have problems with it.
 
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