Dealing with a Full Hard drive

What is the best way to find out which files are taking up the most space on my hard drive. Besides itunes of course. I moved some of itunes files to an external hard drive, but I was hoping to free up more room.

I noticed that there is no defragmentation software included with OS X. It seems some think you need and some think you don't. Will this help as I move files off my macbook? Can't shake the windows programming yet.

Any ideas on dealing with large photo libraries?

Iphoto and itunes use the most hard drive with just storage. I have 40 GB of photos in my account and both my boys have their own libraries under their accounts. They are 5-10 GB right now, but they have a renewed interest in photos and its been going up fast.

I was thinking about ugrading to snow leapord to help free up more space. Something I have been wanting to do anyway.

This may help

Disk Inventory X

jtdolphins said:

What is the best way to find out which files are taking up the most space on my hard drive.

Click to expand...

See the post above. I believe it's free, but as a fairly new Mac user PLEASE be cautious about throwing files away willy-nilly.

I noticed that there is no defragmentation software included with OS X. It seems some think you need and some think you don't. Will this help as I move files off my macbook? Can't shake the windows programming yet.

Click to expand...

There's not really a debate about this: Mac OS X doesn't require defragging. Period, end of story. There are some who argue that periodic whole-disk defragging improves performance slightly, and that's probably true over time, but it's not *necessary.*

Any ideas on dealing with large photo libraries?

Click to expand...

Both iTunes and iPhoto support the concept of multiple libraries, which is probably the best way to manage them. They each handle the concept slightly differently, but the bottom line is that you can put libraries of music and photos on external drives easily. Here's a technote on the procedure for iTunes for moving an existing library, and I suggest using the $20 shareware iPhoto Library Manager to create and manage existing libraries in iPhoto.

I was thinking about ugrading to snow leapord to help free up more space. Something I have been wanting to do anyway.

Click to expand...

While upgrading to Snow Leopard *is* a good idea and will free up *some* space, that's not going to make a huge difference from a purely space-saving perspective. What's going to work best is to prioritise how you use iPhoto and iTunes and create libraries accordingly.

As just an example, my laptop's iPhoto library contains only pictures I've taken this year. The others are in other libraries on an external that is only accessible when the laptop is home (which it is most of the time). Likewise, I've limited my iTunes music library (which doesn't actually take up all that much space by comparison) to just the popular music and podcasts I listen to; libraries on my external hold classical, radio drama and ambient stuff.

I've done similarly with iMovie projects, which also take up a large amount of room. Only the projects I'm actively working on are located on the laptop's drive; the others are on external drives.

This is by no means the only way to manage digital assets, but it's one way. You'll find your own best workflow.

louishen said:

This may help

Disk Inventory X

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. I found 40 GB of data that I no longer need using that program. Something I thought I had deleted awhile ago, which is already backed up elsewhere.


Chas M, thanks for the links. That iphoto manager looks like what I need for the family. I have not really seen much concrete info that degfragmentation works, just people saying I need to do it with nothing to back it up. I will have to look over the technical notes later, but they look very helpful and the iphoto ideas.