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gotanproject · Apr 12, 2006, 11:29 PM

Hi,

I am kinda new to the macs and I have a MBP.
I recently did a clean installation of the OS X using the boot disks that came with my MBP.
I noticed I only have about 74GB of free space out of 92GB After the clean installation(clean installation meaning deleting all the previous files)

Does the OS X take up 18GB of hard drive space

or is there some large hidden file floating around my MBP hard drive??? I don't see how mac os x can take up 18GB of hard drive space!! There must be some kind of junk floating around my hard drive taking up space how do I find it??
Please help me find what junk there is in my hard drive!

amazing · Apr 13, 2006, 12:37 AM

One man's junk is another man's must-have features?

You can chuck tons & GBs of printer drivers from /Library/Printers (especially since you'll download newer drivers when you buy a new printer.)

Garageband alone has about 5 GB of support files, loops, etc. If you never use it, delete them. Likewise, iDVD has 1.8 GB of themes. Don't have a DV minicam? =delete them. Or burn them to DVD for archiving.

Download DeLocalizer (versiontracker.com) which will eliminate tons of language support files from Apple software.

Apfhex · Apr 13, 2006, 12:56 AM

Your MBP came preloaded with more than just OS X, didn't it? Did it come with iLife and other applications? Those can take up some GBs at least. And the default installation of OS X may include many things you don't need like printer drivers and other language localizations. The later can take up quite a bit of space.

Catfish_Man · Apr 13, 2006, 01:07 AM

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/

lilford · Apr 13, 2006, 05:16 AM

Where can you find like the other languages and stuff?

harrisjamieh · Apr 13, 2006, 05:30 AM

Using DeLocalizer - I just used it and saved 1.8 gigs!

lilford · Apr 13, 2006, 05:33 AM

I used omni disksweep and got back about 6 gigs! So will using DeLocalizer get rid of all those other lanugages too?

headbirth · Apr 13, 2006, 08:28 AM

When you install ... click the customize button and uncheck all the extraq languages, fonts and printer drivers if you want. You could probable chuck alot of the extra apps if you wanted to as well.

lilford · Apr 13, 2006, 04:36 PM

Thanks, I love it, saved me abou 1.6 gigs of data just in frickin Languages.

bergy · Apr 14, 2006, 09:02 AM

Hi there and welcome to the great world of Macs!

In addition to the great info so far ...

Macaroni will remove language files on an ongoing basis ... it also does some other routine maintenance automatically. It's a great app ... check it out ..

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633

Freeing Space on Your OS X Boot Volume
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html

Cheers!

SLiMeX · Apr 14, 2006, 09:11 AM

i just did a clean install with no additional languages and one printer driver, it was just about 3GB's.

alphasubzero949 · Apr 14, 2006, 08:25 PM

A caveat to those using those 3rd party wrappers or the actual Terminal command to wipe all localizations other than your own:

Every time you update your system or download new apps you'll have to repeat the process as OS X will keep the multiple localizations in the new packages.

With that said, I have a 35 GB partition set aside for Tiger. After installing everything straight from the 10.4.3 retail DVD + Xcode (for Fink and DarwinPorts) + iLife '06 + GarageBand jam packs I was down to about 8 GB left over. After trashing all non-English localizations I saved a little more than 3 GB. It's enough to download about two DVD images for burning while keeping 10% of the partition free. How much OS X eats depends on what you have installed although it can be a pig with the localizations and universal binaries.

bergy · Apr 14, 2006, 09:13 PM

Hi alphasubzero ...

That's another nice thing that Macaroni will do automatically as scheduled ... remove localized files.. in addition to repairing permissions and running cron scripts ....

amazing · Apr 15, 2006, 01:49 AM

About losing HD space: If you have a newer Mac that supports "safe sleep" then you lose HD space to implement this "feature." Namely, you lose an amount of HD space equivalent to your RAM, plus 750 MB.

For my 1.25 GB of RAM, that would mean that I lose 2 GB of HD space. I don't have to worry about that because my 12" PB doesn't support safe sleep, but when I get a newer laptop, I'm gonna be turning safe sleep off and deleting the hidden safe sleep image. I haven't needed anything like that in all these years, haven't lost anything, and don't quite see the need for it.

alphasubzero949 · Apr 15, 2006, 05:19 AM

Originally Posted by bergy

Hi alphasubzero ...

That's another nice thing that Macaroni will do automatically as scheduled ... remove localized files.. in addition to repairing permissions and running cron scripts ....

Not to derail the discussion, but...

1. Repairing permissions on a schedule is wholly unnecessary. The only time it should be done is due to (a) an admin user changing things around without any understanding of said actions or (b) a crappy installer such as the one for Flash Player.

2. Cron scripts are handled by launchd or can alternatively be passed on to anacron on pre-Tiger systems (have to download it from Alistair's Pl).

lproj files can be removed whenever...there is no need to schedule time to do that.

CharlesS · Apr 15, 2006, 05:30 AM

Whatever you do, don't run Monolingual. It has an amazingly stupid bug that will completely disable your ability to run older PowerPC apps in Rosetta, and the only way to fix it will be to reinstall the OS.

version · Apr 15, 2006, 08:05 AM

What about apps that can strip out the Intel portions of apps for us PPC users? Are any of them reliable?

alphasubzero949 · Apr 15, 2006, 02:08 PM

Originally Posted by version

What about apps that can strip out the Intel portions of apps for us PPC users? Are any of them reliable?

lipo.

version · Apr 15, 2006, 02:43 PM

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

lipo.

Cheers!

Firefox went from a 45MB behemoth to 27MB. no bad.