How to free up hard drive space

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sock2828
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How to free up hard drive space

Post by sock2828 »

is ther some way to free up hard drive space on a mac
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bicostp
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Post by bicostp »

OS 9 or OS X?

It's simple with OS 9, just go through the folders and delete or move things you don't need to an external drive. Same with OS X, move stuff you rarely use to an external USB drive. (Get a USB hard drive enclosure at CompUSA and put an off the shelf hard drive in it.

And I'm going to make myself clear right now.

DO NOT POST ANYTHING LIKE "MACS SUCK GET A WINTEL PC!" OR YOU WILL BE BANNED FOR 3 DAYS.


Those kinds of remarks seem to come up every time someone mentions Macs, and I'm sick of it. People who are basically Windows fanboys generally have no idea what they're talking about, and the threads wind up turning into flamefests. So I'm putting my foot down. We don't need the flaming. Understand? :x
gamemasterAS
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Post by gamemasterAS »

MACZ SUCK

Just kidding.I am the proud closet owner of a Mac. I am a proud owner of a Dell. Yah why cant we be freinds I love my Mac and my Dell.
.
NES_fanatic
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Re: How to free up hard drive space

Post by NES_fanatic »

sock2828 wrote:is ther some way to free up hard drive space on a mac
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legoboy
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Post by legoboy »

Uh... hahaha.

Most hard drives have good enough shielding that it would take one heck of a magnet to ruin the hard drive. Just about as strong of a magnet to pick up a car in a junk yard.
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Post by NES_fanatic »

Then how about an airport bag scanner? Or does it only ruin film?
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Post by legoboy »

Nope, my iBook has gone through airport x-ray machines about 4 times. No damage done.
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Post by NES_fanatic »

They must have skipped the structural integrity test (hammer).
bicostp
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Post by bicostp »

NES_fanatic wrote:They must have skipped the structural integrity test (hammer).
I'm warning you, shut up. This is spamming and almost exactly what we were trying to avoid. If you don't have anything productive to post, don't.

Besides, the older PowerBook G4s were made of titanium. Hell I have a Power Mac AND a Powerbook 1400 that were in a van jtogether when it ran into another car. Both machines flew and hit the metal partition. Both still work just fine, no replacement parts needed.
*o*
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Post by *o* »

my suggestion is (if you have lots of music and video) get a usb 2.0 250gb external hard drive and put it all on that i do this...its great! i use the internal hard disk for programs and thats about it...but if you cant afford this...try treesizei dont know if it runs on a mac..it works on pc and its really useful for clearing up hard disks
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usbcd36
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Post by usbcd36 »

If you have an optical burner (CD burner/DVD burner), you can do what I do and archive files I no longer use. I suggest going out and getting a 100-CD spindle and StuffIt Deluxe (to segment files). If you have a LOT of files to archive, (several hundred gigabytes), get a RAID. They're not cheap, but they're the only thing that can give you access lots of storage.

Also, if you have a recent Mac, you'll have a FireWire 400 port (or if you went high-end, a FireWire 800 port, which is even better). This port has actual (not theoretical, but actual) transfer rates that are much faster than USB 2.0, so try to get an external FireWire instead of USB if you go that route.

I know this is the part everyone hates, but whatever medium you get to store files, get two times the number because it is critical that you BACK UP YOUR DATA!!!

At the moment, I am still trying to archive the files off of my backup drive so that I can actually use it. If you buy a backup drive, inscribe in your mind that you will only use it for backing up.

Still, the true key to not running out of space is to get a smaller hard drive.

Example: me

Mac LC w/ 60 MB (MB, not GB) hard drive: never filled it up
Mac LC II w/ 250 MB hard drive: never filled it up
Performa 6400/180 w/ 1.8 GB hard drive: took 7 years to fill
Graphite iMac DV w/ 40 GB hard drive: took 4 years to fill
+ 1 250 GB Maxtor OneTouch: took 1 year to fill
PowerMac G5 w/ 250 GB hard drive: took 9 months to fill

Edit: and if you're looking for the full lecture on using space…

Ok, should you be one of those people who open video-editing software more than word processing software, you should also be one of those people that have a separate drive solely for those massive files that video editing creates. If you don't have such a drive, you are 1) slowing down your system by limiting the amount of space that your swap files can expand to and 2) risking data corruption and/or fragmentation (if you delete any files whatsoever).

EASIEST AND MOST IMPORTANT TIP OF ALL:
If you have a folder full of your past 7 years of work, and you might ever need some of that again, (and you're not a video editor), throw it onto an optical disc (or two) and stash them separately in safe places (a bank deposit box is a good place).
sock2828
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Post by sock2828 »

its kinda weird thogh i have a i book g4 with mac os x and my hard drive is just kinda full i only have like 14 giga bytes of stuff (music and videos) and thats it ther just should not be that much stuff on it i cant figure it out
A watched download never completes.

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Harshboy
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Post by Harshboy »

yes, HDDs are shielded cause the Macbook has the Magsafe power adapter, and the Laptop is held together by magnets when closed
usbcd36
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Post by usbcd36 »

sock2828 wrote:its kinda weird thogh i have a i book g4 with mac os x and my hard drive is just kinda full i only have like 14 giga bytes of stuff (music and videos) and thats it ther just should not be that much stuff on it i cant figure it out
I'm assuming you have a 30 or 40 GB drive then? A few tips:

•clear caches
•clean out VM swap files
•get rid of apps you don't use

For the first two, I recommend you get a program called Cocktail. Even the demo version will allow you to do that. As long as you're cleaning, take the time to optimize your hard drive (Norton Utilities has Speed Disk, or there are some others…). Then, go into Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app) and repair the permissions on your startup disk. Unless you leave your iBook on overnight and tell it not to sleep, you'll also want to run daily, weekly and monthly, so, in Cocktail, go to System > Scripts and hit run. Re-prebind your system (if you don't install Apple's system updates regularly).

Or rather just go to Pilot, check everything and hit 'run'.
Dark Savant0
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Post by Dark Savant0 »

Do macs have acompression feature for the drives? I ain't pushing windows here, I know they have that feature.

While I am at it, does Linux support drive compression?
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