Where'd my space go?

[keyz]

I just did an archive and install from Tiger to Leopard. Before the upgrade, I had 55.1 GB available, and now it's saying that I only have 41.48 GB available. I'm just wondering where 15 GB of space went. I didn't think Leopard was that huge?!

I have a question though... the archive folder... how much space does that take up? Is my archive what is so big?

 

[apfhex]

I have a question though... the archive folder... how much space does that take up? Is my archive what is so big?

Ummm yeah. It's an archive of your old system, so, it's still going to take up as much space as it did before + the new Leopard install.

 

[xUKHCx]

I have a question though... the archive folder... how much space does that take up? Is my archive what is so big?

Lots and Yes.

 

[Nugget]

I love it when the questions answer themselves!

 

[~J~]

When you do an archive & install... it takes your current OS build (say, Tiger) and shoves it into its own folder (called "archive", appropriately enough). It then installs the new OS (say, Leopard) onto the drive. So... anything you had in Tiger (the OS, all add-on components (Apple software), and all 3rd party app components) go into that archive folder - so however big your OS area was... is how big that archive folder is going to be. Then install Leo on top of that... (which is ~11GB, I believe)... and there ya go.

 

[keyz]

Right on. Makes perfect sense.

My next question is then when can I delete this folder? It kept all my data and settings together when it rebooted. Do I need to keep the archive folder still?

 

[Nick12945]

Right on. Makes perfect sense.

My next question is then when can I delete this folder? It kept all my data and settings together when it rebooted. Do I need to keep the archive folder still?

If everything is working correctly then it's ok to delete the folder.

 

[BobZune]

Right on. Makes perfect sense.

My next question is then when can I delete this folder? It kept all my data and settings together when it rebooted. Do I need to keep the archive folder still?

I believe it is called Previous System. It has a lot of files in it, so took me over 15 minutes for all of them do be deleted.