Home drive with limited memory space but hard drive with 350 GB memory

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I have a late 2006 model macbook pro running version 10.6.8. I have only 6 GB of space left on my home drive but over 350 GB of space on my hard drive. I dont know what to do. I called Apple and they werent able to help. I have firevault enabled but turning it off requires more memory than I have. Thanks
 

pigoo3

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I have a late 2006 model macbook pro running version 10.6.8. I have only 6 GB of space left on my home drive but over 350 GB of space on my hard drive. I dont know what to do. I called Apple and they werent able to help. I have firevault enabled but turning it off requires more memory than I have. Thanks

First we need to get the terminology straightened out...so we know what's going on.

What do you mean by your "home drive". Are you referring to your MacBook's "internal hard drive"...because that's what it's called (not "home drive").;)

And what do you mean by "350 GB of space on my hard drive"...is this an internal drive or an external drive? If an external drive...then that's what it's called...and "external hard drive"

That's how we tell the difference between the hard drives..."internal hard drives" and "external hard drives".

- Nick
 
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Sorry

It is my home folder (under spaces) that has only 6 GB of space left. I have an internal hard drive Macintosh HD (under devices) with 350 GB of space.

Thanks
 

bobtomay

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You need to list - as shown when you do a Get Info on Macintosh HD:

The "Capacity" of the drive

And the "Free" space of the drive.



I'll "assume" that you have a 350GB drive with 6GB of free space.
You need to back that drive up "now" if you haven't. Can't impress upon you enough the importance of this.

Then you either need to start deleting stuff you don't need/want on that drive until you free up at least 50GB worth of space - or you need to head out and buy a new larger hard drive to replace the drive you have.
 
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The capacity of the drive is 500 GB

Free space is 350 GB

My home folder only has 6 GB of free space and I need to increase its capacity as I clearly have "free space" because I cant download new photos update itunes etc without more "free space".

Can you allocate more of your available hard drive space to your home folder or is this not possible?

I have backed up my computer.

Thanks John
 

bobtomay

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My first question would be - why do you have FileVault enabled? If you don't have super spy stuff on your machine, I would strongly encourage you to turn it off. Since you are already beyond that point where it can unencrpyt and expand onto your internal drive, you should use this method.

If you do have superspy stuff on there and need that added layer of protection, then you'll need to enlarge the size of the sparseimage. To do this, you should boot to your OS X disc and use Disk Utility to resize it. Check this link.

Make sure you have a backup before you proceed with either one of them.

Note: I have never used FileVault due to the inherent dangers and problems I read about it when I got my first Mac. So, advice above is just what I've gathered over time.
 

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