[danviento]

I have a bit of a dilemma. I have a large number of applications that require to be installed on my startup disk. Thanks to large audio libraries and plugins, it just about fills it up.

I was fortunate enough to have put in a second internal HD (props to ME and their optibay) so I was able to move things like the audio content of my iTunes library over to that drive, my Aperture library, and a few game like WoW over there, savings tons of space. However, after a disaster corrupting my drive, I had to wipe and reinstall the OS and al of the software from scratch. I had about 2GB of space left. Here are some areas I think can be moved or "trimmed:"

• Printers. I've dumped all of the printer drivers I'll never use, freeing up 3.5GB worth of space. It's a good start.

• When reinstalling my audio apps, I started with Logic Pro 7, then all of the Jam Packs I had, and the Logic Pro 8. It looked like 8 came with all of the Jam Packs already had plus another one or two I didn't. Did it write over, or skips the already-installed instruments, or did it create multiples stored in slight different locations. This has the potential of shaking out a few more GBs.

• Loops. The Jam Packs and Logic Pro 8 came with a bunch. I know I had most of them uninstalled previously, but opted to add them in this time around for some current projects. Is it possible to relocate them to the second internal drive without too many headaches for Logic and Soundtrack to find them?

• iWeb creates its on hierarchy of copied media for working with my website. Is it possible to relocate this library as you would in iTunes and Aperture and just point the app to it at startup? The hold-down-option-key-at-launch method doesn't seem to prompt anything as it usually would...

• iWork '09 Trial. I've tried it, decided I like parts, but don't want to bother with it until I need some of the new presentation features. The compressed disk image download itself was fairly sizable, so I know this would clear up some more space. The problem is, I don't see an uninstaller anywhere, and its files are located in different places in the system libraries. Does anyone know of an uninstaller I missed? How about a list of all of the iWork '09 file locations?
Apple's make it "just work" mantra of software is useful, but a big disk-space hog. Things from printers we'll never use to old software that you've got the old versions still hanging around cough iWor- cough iLi- cough just don't work for power-users who use their machine as the swiss-army knife of media tools.

Also, should I be looking defragment my disk after all of these measures are taken? I'd do it for a windows machine, but i don't know enough about AFS to choose how to or even whether or not I should.

A tool like Cocktail would help clear some of the space taken over by logs and caches, but I believe that is what corrupted my disk in the first place. Please, knowledgeable forum dredgers, help me! You're my only hope...

[ibook_steve]

It might help to know what hard drive(s) you have and how big they are. If you're doing a replacement of files anyway, why not just clone over to a new larger hard disk than trying to nickel and dime space on the existing disk(s)?

Defragmentation is not necessary on a Mac and won't do anything, and I think you mean HFS, not AFS.

Steve

[danviento]

Sorry, I originally tried posting in the Apple Discussions forums, which has my machine profile, unlike here.

The machine is a 1.67Ghz Powerbook G4 with a 100GB startup disk (7200 rpm) and a 250GB secondary drive (5400 rpm).

I'd consider cloning over, but I'm trying to save $$$ to replace this aging hardware with a new (or used) Mac Pro. Trust me I'd love to upgrade the drive, and I have the skills and tools to do it, but it'll have to wait or be replaced with a real power house.

So... Ideas?

[Cold Warrior]

Please also take a minute to edit your signature. Our forum guidelines allow for just 200 pixels wide by 50 pixels tall. Thanks.

[CharlesS]

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but what you need to do is get a bigger hard drive. Most of the "tricks" out there to save space on OS X save less space than the swap file takes up, which means that on any given day that you use the machine heavily, your swap space could grow and eat up the space you just "saved". You really should consider there to be a ±5 GB margin of error on your free space.

Also, running a disk that full on OS X is not good for it, and can lead to directory issues, or even worse, overlapped files. You need a larger drive.

If you are not comfortable with installing a new hard drive in your PowerBook or paying someone else to do it, you could always get an external 2.5" travel drive that would connect via USB or FireWire, and move some of your stuff there.

[Spheric Harlot]

You *can*, however, install most (but not all) of Logic 8's additional audio files and loops on an external drive - during the installation, you can set the location for each package.

Since Logic Studio comes with some 42 GB (!) of material, the savings involved here are NOT insubstantial.