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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Free up space in hard drive?

Free up space in hard drive?
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donny31
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Jun 8, 2003, 10:21 AM
 
What is the best way to free up some space on my hard drive. I have 60 gb in my 17" with about 10 gbs of music. Not many movies --so im not sure where all the space has gone --any tips on how to free up a bunch of space and is it easy to put a new/bigger hard drive in a laptop.
     
Powaqqatsi
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Jun 8, 2003, 10:54 AM
 
Well I f you only have 10 GB of music + the OS + some other stuff you should have about 35 GB or so left, right ? 1. There is something wrong or 2. you have a shitload of swapfiles. Try to reboot once. If that's not it, then I don't understand your question. Maybe you just have too much stuff on you machine
     
donny31  (op)
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Jun 8, 2003, 10:56 AM
 
Originally posted by Powaqqatsi:
Well I f you only have 10 GB of music + the OS + some other stuff you should have about 35 GB or so left, right ? 1. There is something wrong or 2. you have a shitload of swapfiles. Try to reboot once. If that's not it, then I don't understand your question. Maybe you just have too much stuff on you machine
I have abunch of apps, but i have checked the GET INFO on each and its not that much --are there bigger hard drives for the 17?
     
djjava
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Jun 8, 2003, 11:41 AM
 
there is a thread about a MacNN user who swapped the 60gb for a 80gb.. I won't be as mean as others would be, but do search for previous threads first... it will save you some annoyance of people say, "Search for threads, stop wasting people's time..." as if your purpose in life was to make redundant threads in the forums.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=162930

P.S.: I have about 6gb of mp3/m4ps, a fair amount of apps, and i have about 32gb free. I have one short iMovie/iDVD project as well as some gigs of old PC files. I'm not complaing about the HD space,if i need more, I'll go get a FW800 drive. 60gb, 80gb, not much difference to me.
( Last edited by djjava; Jun 8, 2003 at 11:51 AM. )
http://www.pardonmyenglish.com "Spreading the Conservative Word...In English Only."
RevA PB17 with Panther, Lacie d2 160gb, 4G iPod, Vectorworks 10.5
     
donny31  (op)
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Jun 8, 2003, 09:52 PM
 
Originally posted by djjava:
there is a thread about a MacNN user who swapped the 60gb for a 80gb.. I won't be as mean as others would be, but do search for previous threads first... it will save you some annoyance of people say, "Search for threads, stop wasting people's time..." as if your purpose in life was to make redundant threads in the forums.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=162930

P.S.: I have about 6gb of mp3/m4ps, a fair amount of apps, and i have about 32gb free. I have one short iMovie/iDVD project as well as some gigs of old PC files. I'm not complaing about the HD space,if i need more, I'll go get a FW800 drive. 60gb, 80gb, not much difference to me.
Actualy , I did look at that thread and it didnt answer my question, so i will provide the proverbial " either answer the question, or do replay at all!" response! nicely speaking of course.
     
psisquared
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Jun 9, 2003, 12:32 AM
 
Grab a copy of a utility like omnidisksweeper and find out where your space is being used. http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/
     
Karim
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Jun 9, 2003, 01:24 AM
 
Either that or open your hard drive and select view menu:show view options in the finder and check "calculate all sizes"

It will take a little time to do it depending on how full your drive is but you will see which folders have the most stuff. You can then drill down into the folder and find where all your space went.
     
CyberPet
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Jun 9, 2003, 02:38 AM
 
I checked my HD with OmniDiskSweeper and to my horror found out that there is lots of stuff I never use! Just the printer drivers for all printers takes up half a gig and I only have 2 printers, I sure don't need printers for that many printers (a clean-out is needed). If you've installed the Developer package the documentation alone takes over 400 Megs.

My Application folder holds 6.7 GB *gulp* so I think I need to clean out some stuff I don't use. And my User folder holds over 18 GB (11.7 of those is Music).

It takes a while for OmniDiskSweeper to check the drive (it does a lot of calculating of folders etc) so let it take its time, the checked folders will turn purple when it's done calculating.

It's interesting though to see where all your harddrive space has gone.
/Petra
     
Mastrap
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Jun 9, 2003, 05:08 AM
 
I was just about to recommend OmniDiskSweeper as well. Download the free evaluation package here
     
ae86_16v
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Jun 9, 2003, 02:52 PM
 
I know that when you reinstall OS X, you should take out all the localazation files that you don't use. That saves a bunch of space. If I remember correctly somewhere around 500 to 700 megabytes.

Also I remember someone told me to take out the printer folders/files not in use.

Let us know if you find out any other technics.
     
Preciousss
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Jun 9, 2003, 04:40 PM
 
If you didn't select the option to leave out "extra" language files on installation, you can use Monolingual or DeLocalizer to free up that space. I haven't used either one, but you can find them on Versiontracker.

About the printer drivers. I was wondering if OSX updates reinstall them. When I got my PB, I chose only the HP drivers when I reinstalled, but when i look in the Print Center, there's a whole pile in there. Anybody know the answer to this?
     
donny31  (op)
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Jun 9, 2003, 05:01 PM
 
Thanks for the tips --I did download omnisweep and found out that I had 23GB's!!! of files in my user trash! i didnt realize that they went there! my computer feels lighter now that it was emptied --thanks!
     
   
 
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