constant messages of disk is full

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I have installed more RAM in my laptop because I'm always getting messages of my disk being full but I don't know why this is. I've almost nothing saved onto my laptop - saving everything to external drive instead - but this hasn't helped either.
 
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MacInWin

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RAM has nothing to do with the disk being full. What does Disk Utility say you have free? Or Right-click the drive and Get Info, what does that say? Bottom line, you need to remove something from the hard drive.

EDIT: and don't double post. That is not polite behavior at this site. A mod will, sooner or later, merge them as they should be.
 
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As MacInWin suggests you have the got the terms mixed up.

Tell us about your hard drive. How much free space? How long since Permissions Repaired?
 
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It says my hard drive is full...mostly movies..though I can't find any! I've backed up my computer and tried to erase the hard drive but it won't allow that option.

Screenshot 2014-06-17 13.41.28.png

Screenshot 2014-06-17 13.41.10.png
 

bobtomay

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******YOUR DISK IS FULL**********

YOU NEED TO DELETE OR MOVE SOME OF YOUR STUFF OFF THE DRIVE - NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!

You are in imminent danger of not even being able to boot into the operating system.

How about some of those 250 GB of movies you have on there? Better start looking for them... Folders to check: Movies, Music / iTunes or iTunes media...
Try a search in Finder for ".m4v"

You should free up at least 100 GB of space - if it was me, I'd be trying to get it down to no more than 300-350 GB used maximum.
After you free up some space:
You should run Onyx and then defrag that drive.
 
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Thanks...I tried finding the movies using different file formats but still can't find them! How do I go about erasing my hard drive? I can't do it using disk utility. Is there another way?
 
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Also, check those Garmin updates, to see if you really need to keep the old versions - each can take anywhere between 2 and 6 GB, and with three to four updates per year, it builds up quickly.

And, your TV streaming services (which is what at least one icon represents, right?), these most likely to keep a local copy, so again, fills up the drive very fast ...
 
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How do I go about erasing my hard drive?

That's a bit drastic! Just free up some space, ideally around 20%, and you'll be fine (after you do what Tom said above, i.e OnyX - defrag). You mentioned external drive, hopefully it is larger, than your internal one, so start moving user files to it, at the same time making sure that, you actually want to keep them ...
 

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Why not use the smart search feature to tell you where the movies are? Set the Kind field to Movie.
 

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How do I go about erasing my hard drive? I can't do it using disk utility. Is there another way?

You can't erase a drive that's mounted - in other words, the one you're working from. Anyway, in your case that's a good thing. Do as you've been advised and then buy a larger faster hard drive to install in your machine, or move most of your movies, photos, updates, etc, to an external hard drive.
 
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Why not use the smart search feature to tell you where the movies are? Set the Kind field to Movie.


I don't know that the OP has even enough hard drive space to create a Smart Folder, but doesn't a Smart Folder just create aliases or links to the original files??

It seems like it would be a good idea to clone the boot drive to a clean 1TB drive with CCC first, and then do some cleanup, moving or deletion.

EDIT:
"It’s worth noting that Smart Folders are virtual folders; your Sales presentations might be spread across different folders, but a Smart Folder will collate them in one place. It hasn’t moved the original files – it’s just displaying them together. ..."

http://www.cultofmac.com/48911/100-tips-19-what-are-smart-folders/

Bold mine. ;-)
 
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Slydude

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... but doesn't a Smart Folder just create aliases or links to the original files?
Yes. You are essentially creating aliases but in most cases what you do to the alias affects the original file
It’s important though, to realize that these Smart Folders do not actually represent copies of the content, but merely virtually link to them. If you delete a file out of a Smart Folder, you’ve also deleted it from its original location.
See The Smart Mac: Smart Folders in OS X — Tech News and Analysis

It seems like it would be a good idea to clone the boot drive to a clean 1TB drive with CCC first, and then do some cleanup, moving or deletion.
Good idea and it's probably the best course of action but with that little free space left it might be difficult to get the clone completed. I certainly expect CCC to be slower than it normally would be.
 
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Seems like the first step would be to find something really big that is not wanted and delete it. Is that possible in this situation?
 
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They've got room to install GP but not enough room for it to build the catalog it would need to help them!
 

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Is your hard disk showing in the finder sidebar? If not,
Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and check "Hard disks" under "DEVICES"

Your drive "Macintosh HD" will show in the sidebar. Click on that. You will get a list of folders.

Highlight "Users." Key Command-I (that's eye, not ell) to get info on the Users folder. Is that where all the data is?

If not, it gets a bit trickier, but let's assume that Users is the problem.

Double-click Users to open the folder. Your home folder should be in there. Command-I again. Does it contain most of the data? If not, check the other folders in Users. If so, open your home folder, and start doing Command-I on the folders it contains until you find where the problem files are.
 

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