Help with dwindling hard drive?

Hi guys, I'm new around here. I've had my 14" G4 iBook for about over a year now though and just finally started posting. My question is, I've got a 60GB hard drive but i'm down to 18GB. I've moved my entire photo collection to an external HD which was about 5GB and I've got about 11GB in music which I'm planning on moving over as well. I'm just wondering where all the other space has gone. I've trashed any programs I don't use and tried clearing out all my old documents. I really don't use the computer for anything more than word processing and web stuff.

My only thought of where the space could be going is from my watching videos on youtube, or google video, or other places like streetfire (carstuff). Could this be taking up the space? What about Limewire? I thought when I deleted downloads from the limewire delete button, it's gone. Is this not the case?

I'm prepared to reinstall OSX and rebuild the software but really don't want to do that since I'll also have tons of updates to download, redo all my settings, etc.

Any help is appreciated!

Download Whatsize and it will tell you what's taking up what space.

Awesome, thanks!

I don't see any large files taking up space. It just seems as though I keep losing a little bit of storage over time. Is this from updating the computer and downloading the updates?

Did you delete the foreign languages? I used a program called monolingual. It deleted all languages other than english, french and spanish. Freed up 2 gigs. Also on limewire, when you delete the downloads on limewire, you are simply deleting the que and the history saved on limewire itself. All programs are downloaded into a seperate file. Limewire creates its own file under music called limewire. All files are saved there until manually deleted. Simply deleting these files by hitting the delete button on limewire does nothing to the actual files saved to your hard-drive.

Wow, 2gb just for foreign languages? That's rediculous! I'll have to check out the monolingual program. How does it work though? Can I not just find the other language files and get rid of them?

Also, on limewire I've found the "Shared" folder under my account where all the files are downloaded to. When I use the delete button in Limewire, they dissappear from that folder. Is this not deleting them? Do they now change to a hidden file?

I just ran that program and found out that 28.6 of my 55.5 GB of memory has been used on music.
lol

You know how you have all your music in iTunes, then you have a music folder, like in your finder. If everything in my iTunes is also in my music folder, does that mean it's taking up TWICE the amount of memory that it needs to? Should I delete everything in my music folder? Then would it stay in iTunes and work the same way?

Death, I think that is true. If you've dragged and dropped music into iTunes, then it has copied it into the itunes folder. So if you have another folder then it's just doubled on your HD. Now if you were in iTunes and directed iTunes to look in that folder, then don't delete it. Drag and drop it into iTunes, let it do it's own thing, then delete.

Now back to my topic... I've moved all my movies, music, photos, and docs over to an external HD. I'm only up to 34GB out of 60. This just doesn't seem right. What's up!?!?

I Just tried the monolingual app. Simply awesome.

Neil M.

i would backup all files you want onto an external hdd and upgrade your internal hdd for $100 to a 120 gig hdd, then copy the files back on. then there wouldn't be any need for the external one and you would only need to use it to backup files sometimes. thats what i am doing for my ibook that i just won a bid on off of ebay.

Didn't know there was a HDD that big for the ibook. That sounds like the best idea yet.

AppleAday said:

Didn't know there was a HDD that big for the ibook. That sounds like the best idea yet.

Click to expand...

You can put any PATA (NOT SATA) 2.5 inch drive in there, a word of warning though, it is a really fiddly job. I did it a few weeks ago on a 12" iBook when I replaced the 30Gb 4200 speed drive with a 120Gb 5400 one (and boy does that make a difference!), it took me about 4 hours altogether and I can definitely say it is not for the feint hearted!

The largest PATA drives I've seen are 160Gb but I'm not sure if they do that size in the 5400 speed.

Amen-Moses

yea my suggested hdds are not manufactured or have ever been shipped with any ibook from Apple. These hdds are compadible but just not offered by Apple for the ibook line.