12-03-2011, 04:32 AM

Just making the transition from a life using PC's to my first Macbook - about an hour and a half into it actually - and i'm having trouble with the amount on disk space... It's a refurbished Macbook Pro that tells me it has 120G hard drive, but only 25G available? Doesn't seem to be running a ridiculous amount of apps...
This is frustrating - one of the main reasons for the switch is my increase in the amount of time spent on iTunes, and I have an 80G itunes library, plus a bunch of videos and photo's i'd like to move onto this device, but it doesn't look like this will be possible.
Can anyone tell me what the normal amount of free disk space would be and how I can free some up?

12-03-2011, 04:42 AM

Just found something - if I 'Get Info' on my 'Users' folder, it shows it being 85G... but when I look at the one user file in the folder, it only shows it as 5G... are there some hidden files or something in there?

12-03-2011, 07:18 AM

You have an 80G itunes library? Well, that will suck up the vast majority of your drive space available after the install of the OS and any applications.

What files/directories are in your home directory, there should be more than one (there should at least be an 80+G Music directory).

12-03-2011, 07:29 AM

With a current 80GB iTunes library, the first thing I'd be doing is upgrading that hard drive to maybe a 500GB.

I've found the same holds true in OS X as in Windows - you'll want to keep a minimum of 15% free space on your system drive. I'm probably just a tad hypersensitive to system slow downs - I notice slow downs due to not enough free space right about 30% - same as on that other OS.

If you want to know where all your drive space is being used, I find WhatSize to be well worth the price and it has a free trial.

A freebie is Disk Inventory X - it's only a graphical display though and not nearly as helpful imho.

12-03-2011, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by jdse7en

It's a refurbished Macbook Pro that tells me it has 120G hard drive, but only 25G available? [...] I have an 80G itunes library, plus a bunch of videos and photo's i'd like to move onto this device, but it doesn't look like this will be possible.

That seems about right. You started with 120, subtract 80 for the iTunes library and you have 40. Word around the net is that a clean install of Lion will take up 10GB (I don't know what version of OS X you're using so we'll assume Lion). That brings us down to 30GB. Add some apps and videos to that and 25GB seems reasonable.