My Mac is running out of disk space. What can I do?
If you’re willing to sort through all of your personal files, deleting old, unused and unecessary files is a good way of freeing up space on your Mac. To effectively spring clean your home directory you need a good picture of what’s living in there. Disk Inventory X is a program that will scan every file on your hard drive and produce a color-coded map of what’s taking up your drive space.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed Disk Inventory X, locate it in the Applications folder and run the program. Disk Inventory X will ask you which drive you want to scan, after which it will take a few minutes to inventory all of the files. Be patient – this can take a couple of minutes. After Disk Inventory X is finished scanning your Mac’s hard drive, it will show you a map that looks something like this:
Each colored block displayed in that window represents a file. Larger file sizes correspond to larger blocks, and files of the same type are grouped together. Clicking on a block will pull out the drawer and show you detailed information about that individual file.
Armed with this road map, you should be able to effectively track down and either compress or get rid of files whose space you want to reclaim. Here are a few pointers:
- Large files take up a lot of space, but large amounts of small files also take up a lot of space. If you spot a temporary file that’s only a few kilobytes in size, don’t pass over it because it appears insignificant.
- Be careful not to delete essential system files. If you are deleting files that were created by a program (such as the sound effects in GarageBand), you may cause that program to malfunction. Instead, use other programs that are meant to slim down your applications, such as the ones mentioned at the end of this article.
- If you’re unsure of whether you’ll need a file in the future, back it up instead of simply deleting it. We usually stick to deleting temporary and junk files, while compressing and backing up old and unused files to external volumes such as CDs, DVDs or external hard drive before deleting them.
- All storage devices, including the hard drive in your computer, have a finite lifespan. CDs and DVDs in particular begin to downgrade with time. You should back up files to multiple locations, and check them periodically to ensure that they’re still intact.
More tips for reclaiming used disk space
Run the periodic program to free up space
Mac OS X has a program called periodic that runs at set intervals, performing maintenance tasks that free up disk space. If your Mac is turned off at these times, periodic may not have had a chance to run. Open up the terminal (in the look in the Applications folder under Utilities) and issue the following commands:
sudo periodic daily sudo periodic weekly sudo periodic monthly
Note: prefixing a command with sudo like we’re doing here tells the computer that you want to run this command as the Administrator. You are going to be asked for the Administrator password. Additionally if this is the first time you’ve used sudo, you may see this message:
We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System Administrator. It usually boils down to two things: #1) Respect the privacy of others. #2) Think before you type.
Take heed of this warning and move on.
Eliminate unecessary language packs with Monolingual
Your Mac is capable of operating in many different languages. Unless you’re a world traveler or fluent in a dozen languages, these are most likely of no use for you. As such, you could be using the disk space these languages are consuming for other purposes. Monolingual is a program that removes all of these extra language packs from your system.
Note! By running Monolingual, you are removing system files from your computer. First, you should be sure you want to do this, especially if you’re using some special software that requires these language files. Secondly, read the F.A.Q. on the Monolingual website before using the program. When you delete these extra languages from your system, your computer will not be able to operate in these languages.
Remove the iPod photo cache
Apple says:
“When using iTunes to sync photos to iPod photo, iTunes creates a folder called iPod photo Cache in the top level of the folder you selected for your photos.”
This folder takes up space in and of itself, and if you’ve changed its location then you might have multiple copies hanging around. Read the AppleCare support document “Photo Sync creates iPod photo Cache” for more information.
Relocate GarageBand
GarageBand is a great program, but if you don’t use it then it’s simply taking up a large amount of space on your hard drive. GarageBand includes not only the Application itself, but a library of audio files. GarageBand Anywhere is a utility that lets you move the GarageBand application to another drive.
Slim down your iPhoto library
Any time you perform an action that modifies a photo, iPhoto creates a backup of the original. Original backups, thumbnails and empty albums are all candidates for freeing up disk space. iPhoto Diet is a program that does the following:
- eliminate duplicate photos created internally by iPhoto or imported by yourself
- remove iPhoto’s backups of rotated or modified photos
- strip the thumbnail icons of your photos
- remove thumbnail photos that have become mixed up with your high resolution photos
- identify photos which have not been added to albums
- weed out unnecessary folders and files from the library
Warning! You may not be able to recover anything that iPhoto diet removes. Before using iPhoto diet, back up your entire photo album, including all of the originals, to a CD, DVD, external hard drive or some other storage volume besides your hard disk. You can do this by coping the “Photos” folder from your home directory onto the backup storage medium.
[tags]hard drive,hard disk,storage,mac,os x,disk inventory x[/tags]
