Applications :: How To Find Largest Files And Folders When Freeing Up Disk Space
Aug 19, 2010
I'm an application developer thinking of writing a small utility to help you clean up your disk when it gets full. The idea is to present the largest files and folders in your home directory along with the last time they were opened.
I was just thinking about the stuff I have on my HD, and I'm not really sure what is eating up the 500gb HD I have installed in it (with only 50gb or so available at the moment). The usual culprits (iTunes and iPhoto library) are both on externals.
And i don't *think* I've got nearly 450gb worth of audio work on here.
So my question is, is there an application that will scan through my system HD and tell me which olders/files are taking up the most space? This may give me some idea of what I should start getting rid of.
I used to use an application that was able to list every file/directory on my hard drive and list them in order of size. I edit large MP2 video files and sometimes it's hard to remember where they all live... this tool was useful because MP2 files are so large, they often are the biggest files on my machine.
I keep getting messages to free space on my startup disk and would like to know the best way to this? I have a emac hard disk running Mac OS X 10.4 10.
I just got an external hard drive because I have thousands of songs that my macbook cannot hold.
I am using Time Machine to put everything on my external but I was wondering....if I delete the music on my computer so that I just have it on my external - will Time machine delete it off my external when it automatically updates since it is no longer on my computer?
I want to download more music but am scared of losing any old music.
I want to remove all the software I won't use. I only have one printer, I don't beleive I'll ever use Garageband or iMovie and maybe other apps as well could be eliminated. Which is the best way to pare my OSX down to as small as possible?
Info: MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 15"; 2.0 i7, 16GB; iPone 3gs
I have a macbook pro with a 150g HD and only 30g remaining. I'd like to know how you find where all this mass is located? From my own findings it would seem that I have at least 43g of iTunes content found C Stride - Music - iTunes I don't fully understand why i have this and indeed if i can delete it as I thought i had all my iTunes content on an external so not to tie up my lap top HD (500g with 230g of iTunes content). But, when I look in preferences on iTunes the media location folder is no longer displaying anything?? It used to. 1. Can I get rid of the 43g of content on my HD? 2. Why is no media location displaying in iTunes? 3. How else can I see what is using 120g on my HD?
I'm trying to free up space on my Macbook Pro Laptop, but I can't find out what is taking so much space as I've deleted tons of files with little gain. Can anyone tell me how I can gain some of my space back as I'm terribly low and need more space.
My mac is full! I've been trying to delete files but no space is freeing up. I also tried transfering files to my external but still no free space. Checking my drive says I have 114.7 gb in a sparse disk file? what is it and how may I open up some room?
Info: MacBook (13-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I am giving my son my old macbook air, and wanted to free up as much hard drive space as possible. I deleted my user account, and I expected there to be about 225 GB of free space. There is not, however. When I check the storage, it says there is nearly 78 GB of "Backups." My question is whether that backup is from my old account, and ultimately, where can I find this to delete it to free up the space.Â
I also have another macbook air that I plan to sell. What is the best way to erase the contents of the computer without deleting the OS. I plan to sell it, and obviously don't want the next purchaser to have access to my old data.Â
I'm trying to clean up my mac by locating the largest files. I remember that there was a program that sorted all of your huge files where you can look, edit, delete, do whatever you want with them, but I have forgotten what this program is called. I've looked all over and cannot find it. Does anyone have an idea of what it is called or maybe how I could locate huge files on my HD?
I'm having a pretty serious problem. I attempted to erase the free space on my HD, as I do from time to time, except this time it appeared to hang/freeze at the end, when it gets to the part where it creates a temporary file. I waited for several minutes and it didn't move. I tried clicking the skip button, but that did nothing either, so I force quit Disk Utility.
The problem is, it left the disk at "Zero KB" of free space, effectively making my computer inoperable. I was in the process of studying for a huge exam tomorrow, and am currently flipping out.
If it matters, I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, running 10.4.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the OS and import the old files, but my real fear is that I will have to do a fresh install of the OS.
you inundate me with references to other threads, understand that I performed multiple searches.With that said, are 1TB drives available for the 13" MBP? If so, can someone link me to the available drives?
I'm new to the Mac and the owner of a 13" Power Book which I love. However, I'm finding that whenever I do anything much on the Mac involving photos, video or music, the HD space gets eaten up rapidly. I've worked out that this is partly because the Mac has its own way of storing files. So, for example, if I have a folder called 'My Music', where all my music files are stored, once I import these into iTunes, it it all duplicated into the iTunes library, thereby taking up twice the space. I guess that the same thing happens with iphoto and imovie as well.
I have read these forums/google for a definitive/best way to track down the files that are clogging up your hard drive. I've tried the Smart Folder route and for whatever reason it doesn't work as well as I'd like. What is the best way to do this?
I'm new to mac. Used migration assistant to transfer my data files and folders from windows 7 system. The files are there as I can search for a specific file and find it but I don't see any of the folders or files in finder. I have reviewed other forum entries asking questions like this and answers seem to direct folks to another user account but I don't have another user account on this system after migrating.
I just bought a MacBood Pro and used the migration assistant to transfer my files from my PC to my mac and now I cannot find my files. They are not in the corresponding folders where I thought they would show up.
I've only had my macbook for about 3 weeks, and already it's saying I've reached like 110GB. That can't be right though, cause I've only used like 50GB worth of space. I've searched and searched through my Hard Drive to see what's taking the space. But can't find anything. Is there like a program I can download to see all the large files on my Macbook?
whenever I run Time Machine on my PowerBook G4 (1.5 Ghz / 1Gb RAM / OSX 10.5.8) it will eat up GB's of hard disk space while 'preparing the backup'. After that it finishes the backup, but I don't get the space back. I'm talking about the internal HD, not the external target disk of course. Does Time Machine use the space to generate some temporary files? Any ideas how I can get my disk space back
I'm having a pretty serious problem. I attempted to erase the free space on my HD, as I do from time to time, except this time it appeared to hang/freeze at the end, when it gets to the part where it creates a temporary file. I waited for several minutes and it didn't move. I tried clicking the skip button, but that did nothing either, so I force quit Disk Utility.
The problem is, it left the disk at "Zero KB" of free space, effectively making my computer inoperable. I was in the process of studying for a huge exam tomorrow, and am currently flipping out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If it matters, I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, running 10.4.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the OS and import the old files, but my real fear is that I will have to do a fresh install of the OS.
Recently my computer has been constantly showing these pop up information boxes with, "your hard disk does not have enough space" and suggests removing files from your startup disk. What is a start up disk? How can I make room? What is taking up so much space? I don't really download anything major?
I am deleting large amounts of files / directories with 10s of GB of disk usage from my internal hard disk.Then I empty the trash.But I don't get more free space on my hard disk! I am not using File Vault.(I also believe that my file system is not corrupt.) This is quite annoying, since I am still unable to copy stuff on my internal hard disk, but given the amount of files I have just deleted, I should be able to do so.
PS:MacBook Pro, 10.7.3, very recent model, 500 GB internal hard disk.
My air is saying my start up disk is full. How do I delete files from it? Is there a specific location I'm supposed to delete from, or is it just general files from everywhere--email, etc.
I'm looking for a photo management program that will organize my photos using folders for events, so if I ever decide to switch programs, it will be easy because it's all organized already. I currently have iPhoto, but it doesn't seem to create folders in the "Pictures" directory, so I doubt switching to another program from iPhoto will be simple. Do any of you know of an app that does what I want?
I have a 750GB internal HD but film a lot of movies. To free up space, I have moved my iMovie clips off to a secondary hard drive, but I have not seen my free disk space free up on my Macbook pro. Why is this? I moved, not copied the files. They only show now on the external hard drive. I am looking at the free space in Finder > Get Info. I have easily moved a few hundred GB off to the new drive, but my internal HD still shows as over 500Gb used.Â
My 500gb iMac (purchased April 2010) is about at capacity. 350gb of space is taken up by home movies (.mov) in iMovie. I bought an external hard drive and have moved about 200gb over to that drive.Â
After transfer, I deleted the original Events off iMovie and emptied the trash. I checked in both iMovie and in Finder and no longer see those files present on the Mac. Â
I thought this was going smooth and everything worked perfectly, but….when i went to check how much storage space i created on the Mac, the amount of available space barely budged (i moved 200gb of data to the new drive and i created about 30gb of space on the Mac).Â
Are these "deleted" files hidden somewhere and I need to go delete from somewhere else? How do I make sure I get back the storage that i need?Â
This program must exist but I can't find it. It's not complicated: I just want a program that will let me lock folders now, and automatically unlock them for me at a date/time of my choice.