Mac Disc Usage????

[Liesje]

Mac peoples...are there any utilities (either to be d/l or on the OS) that will show me the Mac hard drive and give me like a graph or a list of disc usage? This Mac's hard drive is almost totally full and we cannot figure out what is taking up all of the space. I don't work on Mac's very often, but I have used these utilities for PCs.

 

[Liesje]

n/m my buddy just gave me one

 

[Calvin N. Hobbes]

Just curious but what program are you using?

 

[kramwest1]

And I'm curious what was taking up the space, if I might ask.

In searching through my MacBook to free up some space, I was amazed at how much memory Garage Band stuff took, as well as the chat music stuff (if I remember right).


Mark

 

[Liesje]

I don't remember, I'll check it tomorrow when I'm back at work.

Mark, she had all these folders in really weird places. I check her Music and Pictures and there wasn't hardly anything in there. Then I ran the program and it said 12.2GB were classified as "Documents" and then I found all these old folders all over the place. She only has a 20GB drive (it's an older iBook).

 

[martha]

In searching through my MacBook to free up some space,

How does one do that? And can I ditch all those old iTunes versions? Or do they magically go away when I download newer versions?

 

[Liesje]

It's called Disk Inventory X

 

[martha]

Is that on my machine already?

 

[onebloodonelife]

Omni Disk Sweeper is another good program to use. Here's a link: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/

Martha, I'm pretty sure that iTunes writes over old versions when you update.

 

[neutral]

I use WhatSize for this. I really like it, been using it for a long time.

http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/

 

[kramwest1]

On my MacBook there are 2.5 GB of space used by Garage Band and iLife Sound Effects. If you don't use those programs you could probably delete those folders and get the space back.

On the Macintosh HD look under Library, then Audio, then Apple Loops, then Apple.

Mark

 

[Liesje]

She had 10GB in log files, that's what the issue was. Deleted those and it was fine. She will have to monitor it and see if those come back. If so, there are other issues we don't know about that the computer is constantly logging.

 

[martha]

I'm way too chicken to download stuff. I'll have to get over that won't I?

 

[onebloodonelife]

^

I've used both WhatSize and Omni Disk Sweeper, neither of them have any sort of virus. Plus, you wouldn't get a virus anyway.

 

[martha]

I know, but one time I downloaded something on my old iMac and it FUed something. I haven't even downloaded Firefox yet. : oldfogey:

 

[onebloodonelife]

Interesting. For the most part, as long as the program is reputable, you'll have no problems. And, I'd wait to update programs until a little after their release, just to avoid any issues that could come up.

 

[martha]

I figured it out! Next tour, when you're staying at my house for the LA shows, you can help me out and show me around my 'puter! The spare bed's in the same room as the computer, so no problem!

 

[onebloodonelife]

It's a deal!

 

[redhotswami]

whoa i just tried this. i have all these folders for printers i've never used before! how does that happen?

 

[onebloodonelife]

When you install OSX (or it comes on your computer) it automatically has printer drivers for every possible printer imaginable. I usually reinstall anytime I get a new computer, for that reason, and to remove all the language packs that can take up a few GBs.

It's safe to delete those folders for the printers, as long as you don't use them. If somewhere down the road you need a printer, you can always get it from the manufacturer.

And, a good program to get rid of unneeded languages is Monolingual. http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

 

[martha]

I installed and ran Whatsize and discsweeper. Now what? They showed me stuff. Do I look for it in my finder and then delete it?

 

[onebloodonelife]

With WhatSize, you can right click (or Ctrl-click, depending on your settings) and send it to the trash.

Make sure you're not deleting anything in the System folder though. And, it does warn you about moving it to the trash, so check to make sure that's the file/folder you want to delete. Last night, I did a big oops and deleted my entire U2 folder in iTunes. Luckily, I have Time Machine backups with Leopard, so I could restore it.