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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > MacAir ssd full - can't find out why

MacAir ssd full - can't find out why
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RobOnTheCape
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Mar 15, 2014, 12:47 PM
 
I have a MacAir with 128gig of storage. I received a prompt that my drive is about full, and checked the profiler, and it shows that I have almost 70gig of "other" taking up the majority of space. How do I find out what that stuff is so I can toss it. I went through Outlook and deleted thousands of old emails/junk emails etc.. and came up with a few extra gig, but much more is on here somewhere.

Thanks
     
Cold Warrior
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Mar 15, 2014, 02:15 PM
 
Use the OS X search/Find function to find files of certain sizes.
     
auto_immune
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Mar 15, 2014, 02:45 PM
 
     
RobOnTheCape  (op)
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Mar 15, 2014, 03:15 PM
 
omnidisk was perfect - nice to be able to ID and delete - though a bit too easy. Thanks!
     
RobOnTheCape  (op)
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Mar 15, 2014, 03:20 PM
 
btw - see a few I know nothing about. I see "sleepimage" for 1.1GB, and "swapfile1 for another 1.1GB. In Omnidisk it's coming under "private". If I use spotlight and find it, then try and drag either file to the desktop it says I may need admin name password. I guess it's important, but such large files by themselves with no clue what they are has me wondering.
     
P
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Mar 15, 2014, 04:47 PM
 
Those files are part of the virtual memory system. Do not touch.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
RobOnTheCape  (op)
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Mar 18, 2014, 04:00 PM
 
Found the problem - mostly. By going onto Apple support I found that while through a few years I've trashed about 8 thousand photos from iPhoto, I didn't realize I needed to empty the iPhoto trash(never realized there was a difference). It immediately freed up over 20GB of space.
     
amiller77
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Mar 18, 2014, 06:00 PM
 
I was going through my new MacBook Pro 15" last week, for similar reasons, and discovered that every single iPad/iPhone App I've ever downloaded the last nearly 4 years is being stored in the iTunes folder, even if I haven't used it in years. If you have either device, thats a good place to reclaim some space. I also only recently learned that you can save a search for files of a certain size (or type), using Command-F, and save that search in the left column of a Finder window. That's a good way to keep track of files (that aren't needed by the system) over, say, 100 mb or 250mb in size.
     
ghporter
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Mar 20, 2014, 07:01 AM
 
Since iPhoto has a number of these "special" features (trying to find where a just-imported picture actually is on your drive is a hassle...), I try to avoid using it. I'm glad you found this particular stash of essentially hidden trash - and I hope we'll all keep that in mind the next time someone has this sort of issue.

Have you gone through and identified old log files that you can trash as well? Log files tend to be small, but they take up a whole cluster each, and they pile up over time. I had something like 10MB of logs on my iMac after experiencing an issue with my Firewire connection, which simply took resetting the FW system to resolve. It was a long time after I fixed the issue that I stumbled across those logs while looking at other logs trying to track down another glitch.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
   
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