SSD Startup Disk is Full

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Hi,

I have a 27" iMac with 265GB static state drive and 2TB IHD. I have only had the computer for three weeks and am already getting an error that the startup disk is full - which it is, there is currently only 7 MB of available space.

I should preface this with I'm a new Mac user. I still have my DELL laptop sitting on my desk unable to completely cut the PC cord until I adjust to this new world of finger swipes. So I don't have much on my iMac yet, just my iTunes library and new app purchases, a handful of pictures and three spreadsheet documents converted from Excel.

I can see that the SSD is set up to be the default drive; everything gets saved to that drive and all the Finder sidebar categories refer only to data on the SSD. I'm starting the process of moving things over to the IHD and I have a few questions:

1) Is there a proper way to download apps directly to the IHD with the dual drive configuration? Using an expendable Solitary game as a guinea pig, I tried moving the app from the SSD to the IHD and the app disappears from my desktop. But if I create an alias on the SSD and then link it to the source on the IHD, it seems to work. However, this is a bit of a PITA and I suspect Mac had a better vision that I just don't know about yet. Any suggestions? If I only have the aliases on the SSD, will it cause any issues with app updates?

2) Is there a way to make the Finder sidebar categories point to the IHD instead of the SSD?

3) Are there any guidelines on what should reside on the IHD and what should reside on the SSD to avoid continually filling the startup disk? Can I move my user file to the IHD or should I leave that with the system files on the SSD?

Thanks!
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Way... way too many specs to list.
While this isn't an iOS issue (iOS is iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad).

Moving your home directory is a better solution, as this is the bulk of the data storage.

TUAW Tip: Moving your home folder to another disk (or moving it back) | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Moving /Applications is more complicated, and personally unless I had a LOT of installed applications I wouldn't do so. In fact, I'd really just install them to ~/Applications instead (installing for a single user, but I have no other users on this machine anyway).
 
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Thanks for taking the time to respond, Mike. I downloaded the DaisyDisk app to see what exactly was taking up so much space on my SDD hard drive and turns out it is Mailbox, which incidentally stopped bringing in any new messages a couple of weeks ago. One of the mailbox folders is taking up 220.9 GB - /Users/balvania/Library/Mail/Recovered Messages...

So obviously something in my mailbox settings are causing a problem. Can I just wipe out everything in the Recovered Messages folder? Any ideas what settings are contributing to this issue?

Thanks again!
 

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