Cleaning up uneccessary files / freeing up hard drive space

In windows, I ran a weekly maintenance of virus/adware scans and deletion of unecessary files as well as "Disk Cleanup" to get rid of uneeded files and stuff like that. Apparently I don't need to do the virus/adware scans anymore, but there still has to be stray files taking up hard drive space, especially after downloading and installing several programs including deleting some stuff.

So my question is probably obvious, how do I do maintenance on my iBook? I know I can go to finder and type in the name of whatever program might have left some files on my hard drive. I can then just drag these to the trash, but how do I know which ones I can get rid of and which ones I should keep? If put an application or program into the trash, how do I make sure all associated files go with it?

What are some other ways to keep as much of the hard drive as free as possible?

I notice the iBook seems to use more of the hard drive space for less programs than my Windows desktop did, so I really want to try to keep as much hard drive space free as possible. Any help with this would be much appreciated!

you can delete demo apps like iwork ext. if you got the ilife package and done use garage band you can delete that. i use a program called macjanitor it runs scripts for us laptop users who dont have their computer on between 3 and 5 am in the morning. the scripts are the equivalent of windows defrag and diskclean up.

Neato, that is what I was hoping for. I've installed it and ran it! Thanks dude!

Now all that's left is the questions about how to know what files you can get rid of and what you can keep, and how to make sure all files associated with a deleted program are also deleted. Anyone?

I found it amazing to reinstall OSX as soon as I got my Mac without anything that I needed.. So instead of only having 16gb free on my 30gb I had 27.

And it sped things up a little.

you could delete everything in your applications folder expt for the utilities folder. remember once you drag a program in the trash and delete it its gone for ever. all the files with it are gone. some apps might has an uninstall program located in the folder with the program but most dont. unlike windows we dont have to do the add/remove programs mess.

Really OSx doesnt have alot of junk apps to delete expt for demos of Iwork. you will find that you will use just about every program that OSx has installed. ext for garage band unless your really bored.

If you have not done so, get DeLocalizer. It will remove all non-American English localization resource files, that you are not using. That will free a lot of space.

You can get rid of the calculator and stickies programs! There are widgets for that now...

Biturbo V12 AMG said:

...remember once you drag a program in the trash and delete it its gone for ever. all the files with it are gone...

Click to expand...

This is what I always thought, but now I think otherwise.

I deleted Garage Band several weeks ago. I ran Disk Inventory X (recommended by another poster here in the forums), and discovered a ton of files (many MBs) in Library--> Application Support--> Garage Band that were eating up space.

Can anyone shed any more light on this?

yes cuse garage band has many folders including in your music folder it had demos.

Biturbo V12 AMG said:

yes cuse garage band has many folders including in your music folder it had demos.

Click to expand...

So in other words, when you delete an application, it does not delete all the associated files, and you do have to ferret them out.

I found all the demos in my Music folder, but if I didn't run Disk Inventory I never would have found all that stuff in Library.