11-04-2008, 03:26 PM

***Sorry, the post ended quite long - I think I got carried away!***

I'm a great believer in doing a clean install every now and then to flush out demons and generally speed things up. I usually do a full back up and then use migration assistant to bring my account back once I've done a clean install.

I got to thinking yesterday about going thru the motions today, and sure enough I am writing this on the wife's PC while the Mac does it's thing.

This time, however, I have decided not migrate my account back, and instead have taken back up copies of certain prefs, application data and music & photos etc just to ensure I keep my creature comforts.

Whilst I was routing around copying the relevant files, it came as quite a shock to see the number of useless information I have stored within my Home folder. Masses of useless files that have been created throughtout 5 years of Mac based computing (I migrated my account from my first G4 Powermac). The number of files an folders that I still have from apps that I no longer use or even own was amazing!

Going thru my current Applications folder made me laugh as well. The amount of random freeware that I seem to have accumulated over the years is staggering! And I won't bother mentioning my Documents folder...

Based on the size of Leopard and the data I have saved to copy across, I reckon I'm going to free up about 20-30GBs of space! And I need it! 120GB was a big drive when I bought the MBP 2 1/2 years ago... unfortunately not anymore.

So it got me thinking... how fat is your Mac? (I appreciate there are those among the community who ensure their drives stay clear of clutter and this may be irrelevant to you.) Have you taken the time to look in your Applications folder, or Documents folder to see just how much rubbish you are storing...?

11-04-2008, 03:59 PM

I'm somewhere in-between: I collect a lot of rubbish in my downloads folder, but I usually clear that out every month or so and usually have about 20GB free out of 200 gigs or so.

I don't move apps to my applications folder until I'm sure I want to hang on to them for a while: Since I mainly use Quicksilver to launch stuff, anything unwanted will just stay in my Apps folder unused otherwise, so it stays in downloads until I'm sure I want to keep it.

11-04-2008, 04:24 PM

Well I see where you are coming from but I have a MacPro with 1.5TB internal and another 1TB in External Backup so I am in the too vast to worry category.

11-04-2008, 04:29 PM

I've just replaced my previous 80GB MacBook with a new one and it's sizeable 250GB HDD - previously I had a pretty full HDD and yes I did wonder where the heck it all came from.

All that junk now takes a much smaller bite out of my HDD so I don't have to worry about it for a little longer

11-04-2008, 06:32 PM

I'm not fat at all. In fact I constantly clear things up daily on my mac if I see any things I don't need. I still have 125 gigs of space on my hard drive. I store everything on my external and the rest of what I need on my internal.

11-04-2008, 11:14 PM

I have several terabytes of data on my Mac.

11-05-2008, 01:07 PM

i only have like 45gb of stuff on my macbook out of 160gb so i am all good, when i only had the 120gb model though i did notice that it can quite easily get clogged up i was often wandering where all the data came from i have done a couple fresh installs but haven't since i got the 2.4ghz macbook

11-05-2008, 06:53 PM

My Mac is getting pretty fat... need to do a format soon!

11-05-2008, 07:54 PM

My Macbook is very lean. I have 200 GB free out of 250GB. Most of my data goes into my external HD.

11-06-2008, 01:45 PM

My Mac is full of junk. I don't know where it all comes from but my 80gb drive is near full, as is my 200gb drive...I need a 500gb now and then I'll be set.

11-06-2008, 05:36 PM

I usually do fresh install of Mac OS 10 quite often infact i did one yesterday morning.
I always feel as my Macbook is full of junk when it only has XSlimmer, Adium and a few more programs installed.
All my music on my iTunes is running of my External HD (500GB Western Digital My Book) thank god lol, i have 128GB of Music (All bought albums not single songs).

11-08-2008, 02:39 AM

My mac is getting fat, I will be cleaning it out soon as I am planning to buy a faster HDD this weekend and a 1TB external this weekend.

I have 80GB free out of 300GB. I always have to delete stuff that I later regret to save space hence the 1TB external.

11-08-2008, 04:34 AM

I do the same. I go through my system maybe once every year, one and a half years max, and install a fresh system. Doing this has kept my mac pretty slender. My biggest use of HD space goes to music, movies and pictures. I have an external which holds all of my media and keep all of my import work docs internal. I back up everything to a server, external HD and make a couple of discs with files I can NEVER lose and keep those discs in a safety deposit box. Does anybody else backup like this? Or am I just nuts?

11-08-2008, 08:22 AM

My Mac isn't too fat. Usually about once a month I start to go through all my different folders (Applications, Documents, etc) and clean out stuff that I just don't use anymore. The downloads folder I only use a temporary space anyway, so not much gets held in there.

11-08-2008, 01:05 PM

Eh, I have 20 GB left on my iBook's 40 GB HDD, so I'm doing OK I guess. But I'm sure there's stuff I don't need on it.

Darn it, now I have to go scour my hard drive for crap!