"Startup Disc Almost Full" ?!?!?!? what????

[kbonney]

so recently i have been getting a message saying "startup disc almost full". what on earth does that mean. i have had my macbook since may and no way i have that much stuff on it. i have applecare on it but i figure i'd try you guys first before i sit on hold for hours. what can i do? what does it mean? is it serious? HELP PLEASE

 

[generik]

Well..

1) a 60gb drive has only 55gb of actual capacity
2) MacOS uses up like 7gb of that space?
3) It is so easy to use up the rest

 

[Steve1496]

How much space is left? Open Finder and it says it at the bottom of every window. Something like "xxx Items, xx.xxGB available"

 

[kbonney]

if i open up the hard drive window it says 5 items, 2.6 MB avaiable.

omg, no way that is all the is left. what should i delete? i have a ton of pics and music but do they really take up that much? i am floored that i could have that much stuff on here

 

[~Shard~]

The easiest way to see what is taking up space on your HDD is to use WhatSize. That will tell you where all your GBs are being used and by what.

 

[Steve1496]

if i open up the hard drive window it says 5 items, 2.6 MB avaiable.

omg, no way that is all the is left. what should i delete? i have a ton of pics and music but do they really take up that much? i am floored that i could have that much stuff on here

I would suggest downloading an app to get rid of unused languages/etc to gain back a GB+

Free up a couple MB at the least, then download Monlingual. Delete unused languages (Be careful you cannot get these back without reinstalling the OS) or input menu items. I do not recommend deleting architectures else Rosetta won't work, and your PowerPC apps won't work.

 

[~Shard~]

I would suggest downloading an app to get rid of unused languages/etc to gain back a GB+

Free up a couple MB at the least, then download Monlingual. Delete unused languages (Be careful you cannot get these back without reinstalling the OS) or input menu items. I do not recommend deleting architectures else Rosetta won't work, and your PowerPC apps won't work.

In addition, iDVD themes, GarageBand samples, etc. take up a lot of space. If you do not use those apps, might as well delete some of those files as well!

 

[kbonney]

thnx for responding so quickly guys. both dwnlds are working currently. the languages are being removed. my itunes definitely takes up a lot of space, but i use all that. i can remove some pics i guess. the samples are good things to remove too! thnx again

 

[~Shard~]

No worries, glad to be of assistance.

Another thing to consider is that, in case you weren't aware, when you import something into your iTunes or iPhoto libraries, it makes another physical copy of the file on your HDD - one copy in the iTunes Music Library, for instance, and the original file you still have on your HDD. So, technically, if you do not delete your music and photos after importing them into iTunes and iPhoto, you have duplicates of everything, which obviously would take up twice as much room as necessary!

 

[generik]

Yeah quite frankly iTunes is stupid, why can't it just like... copy everything from the device onto the computer?!

 

[kbonney]

so how would i go about deleting these duplicates? is it worth keeping them? i backup all my photos onto discs anyways and my music is on my ipod but i should probably back that up too.

 

[faustfire]

How much space does it say you have at the bottom of your finder window.
Do you do much rendering in FCP?

 

[~Shard~]

so how would i go about deleting these duplicates? is it worth keeping them? i backup all my photos onto discs anyways and my music is on my ipod but i should probably back that up too.

Simple - iTunes and iPhoto store their copies of your files in their respective directories (i.e. iTunes Music Folder). So, if you have a bunch of music somewhere on your HDD, in a folder called "kbonney's wicked tunes" or whatever, which you have imported into iTunes, simply delete those files from your HDD - they're in iTunes now, so unless you want to keep them on your HDD in that folder for some reason, you can go ahead and delete them.

Backing up photos onto disc is a good idea - you don't want to lose those. As for backing up your music onto your iPod, this is probably sufficient. If your HDD ever died, you could always recover your lost music back off your iPod using Senuti.

 

[kbonney]

YEY! "5 items, 19.85 GB avaiable" !!!!! that whatsize program is a wonderful thing!

 

[kbonney]

so when i go under my username and the music folder and then the itunes folder, i can delete all that? isnt that where the files are played from when i open itunes? if i delete that file wont i loose all the 12.2 days worth of stuff from my itunes? i know i can jsut get the files back using ipod rip but i dont want to if i dont have to because getting that much stuff takes a while.

 

[~Shard~]

so when i go under my username and the music folder and then the itunes folder, i can delete all that? isnt that where the files are played from when i open itunes? if i delete that file wont i loose all the 12.2 days worth of stuff from my itunes? i know i can jsut get the files back using ipod rip but i dont want to if i dont have to because getting that much stuff takes a while.

No, you do NOT want to delete any music that is stored in iTunes folders. As you say, that is where iTunes saves your music for playing. As I stated in my above post, you could delete the copies of the music, wherever they are, which you initially put on your HDD and added into iTunes. If you simply ripped a CD into iTunes directly though, then that would be the only copy so you need not worry. What I was describing is mroe if you have downloaded music or copied MP3s onto your HDD, then imported them into iTunes yourself.

Clear as mud?

 

[Benjamindaines]

Yeah quite frankly iTunes is stupid, why can't it just like... copy everything from the device onto the computer?!

What would be the point other than to illegally take people's music? It makes sense for the way the iPod is designed to be, you have all the music on your computer so you just plug the iPod in and now your music is on the iPod. It's not like one of those little stick MP3 players from Best Buy where you have your music on the MP3 player and only on the MP3 player.

 

[RichP]

if you dont use it, delete garageband. A macbook/pro with it installed has all the samples and jingles on it, and its like a 3-4gb program.

 

[~Shard~]

if you dont use it, delete garageband. A macbook/pro with it installed has all the samples and jingles on it, and its like a 3-4gb program.

Yep, I already mentioned it above. That's a big HDD space-waster.

 

[kbonney]

mud gone. crystal clear water now

 

[~Shard~]

mud gone. crystal clear water now

Excellent, glad to hear it. Wouldn't want you deleting your entire music library by mistake!

 

[disconap]

Yeah quite frankly iTunes is stupid, why can't it just like... copy everything from the device onto the computer?!

Most of the OS9 and (I think) earlier OSX versions of itunes did that, they read the mp3 files from wherever they lay on the hard drive. It sucked, actually, because if you moved a folder, you had to re-alias the mp3s and then delete the wrongly linked ones from your library. The new system makes much more sense, though it would be better if it just shifted the media to the folder in stead of copying it there (but that would cause most users to be confused, and we'd get a ton of "WHERE IS MY MP3?" threads around here ).

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Well, I've got almost 50 GB of pictures+music+videos. So it doesn't sound out of the ordinary.

My iTunes library is 28.83 GB (all legal,) my iPhoto library is 17.3 GB. My 'Movies' folder is 1 GB, and that's WITHOUT any iMovie or iDVD projects (on external hard drives,) or, uh, 'location-shifted video'... (Legally owned, but the process of location shifting a DVD is apparently of dubious legality in the U.S.)

This is on my MacBook Pro with a 100 GB drive. I also have a 6 GB Boot Camp partition, and a 5 GB Parallels disk image, so 11 GB of 'Windows'.

1 GB of Mail, and 1 GB of documents round out my mess. (I have mono-localized, but I have all my themes, as I actually use iMovie and iDVD...)

 

[apfhex]

It sucked, actually, because if you moved a folder, you had to re-alias the mp3s and then delete the wrongly linked ones from your library.

Huh? Not quite sure what you mean... iTunes has always allowed you to move your music around anywhere on the disk while keeping the library entries linked to the files. Unless my memory fails me. I've used iTunes from the very first version. Anyway, you guys realize you can turn off "Copy files to the iTunes Music folder when adding to library", right?