What to delete and where?

Jodes · Jodes #1 (**permalink**)

04-11-2012, 06:39 AM

Hi,

I love Macs but a little bit of a Novice:
I have an older type of MacBook (about 6 years old now) which I think had 40g of memory.
I have been making a couple of DVDs lately on iMovie and then burning with iDVD. During the burning I found that my start up disc would get full and I would have to delete a load of files before it could continue. At one time during burning I had 4. something GB of memory available. I have finished burning the DVDs now and went to delete them. However I still now only have 2.47GB of memory. Where has it all gone?
I have cleared out my iPhoto so basically have nothing in there. No movies saved.
Is there some hidden files I am not sure about that I need to delete?
I am using Snow Leopard.

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Jodes

Raz0rEdge · Raz0rEdge #2 (**permalink**)

04-11-2012, 08:38 AM

Welcome to Mac-Forums

You might want to invest in an external HD (a terabyte drive should cost you less than $150) and use that for all of your movies and so on. You want to have at least 10-20% of your startup disk space free to avoid running into issues with OS X, with a 40G HD, that menas 4-8 GB's, and you seem to be running into that cushion often..

MightyGem · MightyGem #3 (**permalink**)

04-11-2012, 08:36 PM

Download Grand Perspective. It gives a graphical picture of your HDD. The bigger the rectangle, the bigger the file.
GrandPerspective

harryb2448 · harryb2448 #4 (**permalink**)

04-12-2012, 12:53 AM

By 40GB memory you are actually referring to 40GB free space on your hard drive. A drive needs 15-20% free space to work anywhere near its peak so you need a larger hard drive, internally or externally as suggested.

Raz0rEdge #2 (permalink)
Member Since: Jul 17, 2009 Location: MA Posts: 5,845 Mac Specs: 27" i7 iMac with 16GB RAM and 1TB HDD, iPhone 3G & 4, iPod Nano 16GB, iPod Shuffle, iPad 2 16GB WiFi	04-11-2012, 08:38 AM Welcome to Mac-Forums You might want to invest in an external HD (a terabyte drive should cost you less than $150) and use that for all of your movies and so on. You want to have at least 10-20% of your startup disk space free to avoid running into issues with OS X, with a 40G HD, that menas 4-8 GB's, and you seem to be running into that cushion often.. -- Regards ...Ashwin Be sure to read the Community Guidelines \| The more information you provide, the better answers you get, remember GIGO.
	QUOTE Thanks

harryb2448 #4 (permalink)
Member Since: Nov 28, 2007 Location: Nambucca Heads Australia Posts: 14,095 Mac Specs: iMac i5 2.7GHz OS X.8.3	04-12-2012, 12:53 AM By 40GB memory you are actually referring to 40GB free space on your hard drive. A drive needs 15-20% free space to work anywhere near its peak so you need a larger hard drive, internally or externally as suggested. *Hang on to those original install discs like grim death! Using OS X.7 or later make a bootable USB thumb drive before running Installer!*
	QUOTE Thanks

What to delete and where?

Internet Services

Web Development

Digital Marketing

Consumer Tech

Jodes #1 (permalink)
Member Since: Apr 11, 2012 Posts: 1	04-11-2012, 06:39 AM Hi, I love Macs but a little bit of a Novice: I have an older type of MacBook (about 6 years old now) which I think had 40g of memory. I have been making a couple of DVDs lately on iMovie and then burning with iDVD. During the burning I found that my start up disc would get full and I would have to delete a load of files before it could continue. At one time during burning I had 4. something GB of memory available. I have finished burning the DVDs now and went to delete them. However I still now only have 2.47GB of memory. Where has it all gone? I have cleared out my iPhoto so basically have nothing in there. No movies saved. Is there some hidden files I am not sure about that I need to delete? I am using Snow Leopard. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Jodes
	QUOTE Thanks

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)