What's safe to move

I need to make room on my internal drive and I plan on moving files to an external drive. I don't want to move something that will cause me problems.

Can anyone tell me if any of these should NOT be moved. The following is a list of the folders remaining.

Address Book
Applications
iTunes
Library
System
Users.

Users is the largest file and would be the best one to be moved, but I don't know if it or any of the others have to remain on the startup disk.

Thanks,

Mike

mreese88 said:

I need to make room on my internal drive and I plan on moving files to an external drive. I don't want to move something that will cause me problems.

Can anyone tell me if any of these should NOT be moved. The following is a list of the folders remaining.

Address Book
Applications
iTunes
Library
System
Users.

Users is the largest file and would be the best one to be moved, but I don't know if it or any of the others have to remain on the startup disk.

Click to expand...

I don't know what that Address Book folder is or what app it belongs to (that's not a standard one in OS X), but that aside… NONE of those should be moved. Least of all the System, Library, and Users. Unless rendering your system unusable is your goal.

If you have a lot of music, you can move your music to the external drive, then go to the preferences in iTunes to change the Media folder location.

I would move my entire iTunes library to an external hard drive. That will help the most.

Use a tool like Whatsize or daisydisk to figure out what is actually taking up the most space on your harddrive and only move things inside your user's home directory. Moving anything else is asking for trouble.

Typically the iTunes and iPhoto libraries take up a lot of room and can be moved safely. Just hold down the option key the next time you open iTunes or iPhoto to select your old library on the external drive.

The largest files on my internal drive are iTunes @7 GB and Users @ 63 GB. Within the Users folder is the Pictures Folder @ 24 GB.

I have only one User set up. I copied the Picture Folder to an external drive and tried to delete the one on the internal drive but that is required by the system so could not be deleted.

Since all the pics are copied on the eternal drive, can I just delete the individual folders within the Pictures folder without causing a problem? Also, the pics in the Pictures folder are all from my new camera. I have a lot more in iPhoto but they seem to be in a hidden folder and I can't remember where that is or how to get to it.

If they are on the internal drive, can they be moved to an external drive. I probably can also move most of the applications that I've added to an external drive as well.

Here is a link to how to move your iPhoto library to a external hard drive.
How to move your iPhoto library to an external hard drive (Mac) - Reviews, News, and How To Geeks

I have successfully moved my iTunes and iPhoto files and now I'm trying to partition my drive so I can add Windows. I get the message that there are files that can't be moved so use Disk Utilities to reformat the disc after backing up everything. Then add files back and try again.

I misread the choices and erased the clear space. I can't reformat from my CD as I can't find it. I can reboot using Disk Warrior but I don't know if I can access Disk Utilities from that. If I can and I reformat the disk do I need the Leopard Disk to reinstall or can I just move the files back from my Backup Disk.

I also see that one of my external drives now shows up as a red folder with what looks like a PDF symbol. When I open it I do get the the data.