Not enough room left for backing up documents...

Hi everyone. I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum, I don't know where to put it. I have my computer backed up usually every other day and I got a warning popup saying it couldn't back it up because there isn't enough room on the disk. How can I fix this? I am just naive when it comes to storage space on the computer.
Also I got another popup saying that my startup disk was getting full? I really have no clue what this means.
Any help would be great!
Thank you.

What is your backup strategy? Are you backing up using Time Machine to an external drive? As far as running space on the Startup Disk..that's a more serious thing you should address soon..

Open up Finder and point it to "Macintosh HD" and it will tell you how much space is left, you want to leave about 10-15% of the total HD free to avoid lots of issues..

For starters, empty your trash can. Then go through any files you've downloaded and see if you can delete things..or move it to some external media..

Regards

Hey Raz0rEdge thank you for your response. It turns out I was backing up my files onto my hard drive, which was stupid of me.... and it also was storing all those files on my computer! I stopped the automatic back-ups (using Umbrella) and I will manually back up on occasion to an external drive. Thanks for the help - I still have to look into my startup disk....not sure what that means.

CuriousCat said:

Thanks for the help - I still have to look into my startup disk....not sure what that means.

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That's the HD your computer boots up from. It's probably the one (and only one) in your Mac. Otherwise, you'd know.

Startup disk being full as pointed out is something that you need to address ASAP.
If you don't it will lead to file corruption, OS failure, and a need to erase the HD and lose all your information if you let it go.
So, first up, I'd be deleting like crazy and emptying your trash until you have at least 15GB free space.
Then, I would be downloading disk inventory X Disk Inventory X - Downloads and seeing exactly what it is that is taking up all your space and work out what you can delete from there.
Don't delete anything from Macintosh HD/library or system folders!
If you are using Leopard or Snow Leopard, then you should be using time machine to backup onto an external HD.
Apple - Find Out How - Mac Basics

I suspect that getting rid of/moving the backups solved most or perhaps all of the drive space problems. In the future try putting those backups on something else such as an external drive. Even if you had plenty of space on the drive backing up files to the same hard drive is a bad idea. If the drive fails both the original and backup files could easily be lost.

Slydude said:

Even if you had plenty of space on the drive backing up files to the same hard drive is a bad idea. If the drive fails both the original and backup files could easily be lost.

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Absolutely. Backing up to the same hard drive defeats the purpose of making backups. Sure, you may be able to find old files that way but if the HD dies, you lose both the original and the backup.