Macbook air running out of space.

[krs]

I checked because the info' from this site said I should make sure that the SSD I was talking about would actually work as the mac's had a proprietary connector.

Yes - but what the reply was about were constraints relating to the macOS itself, upgradebility and internet recovery.
In the last umpteen years I never heard of a drive itself creating these constraints.
The proprietary connector is just a mechanical interface arrangement to match the connector on the motherboard - or at least it should be.
Maybe Apple is playing games trying to force people to buy their drives.

What it relates to is how much space I've got left to upgrade to High Sierra, but as you'd have all ready seen, I can't get the download from Australia or the USA.

Now you have me confused about the space - this whole thread was about your MacBok Air running out of space so I thought you were replacing the existing internal drive with a larger one.
Without me going through the thread again, can you just summarize briefly what you started with and what you want to end up with.

Like Ian said, you need a lot more than 15 or 20 GB of free space for the macOS to run smoothly.

I have a 500GB drive in my Mac with about 100GB free.
When my free space dropped to 80GB, I decided to upgrade the drive to a 1TB drive.
I think when you go to the trouble to upgrade an internal drive it makes sense to replace it with a drive of at least the double capacity of the existing one.

PS: I just saw this on the fixit site:

Most new SSDs require updated storage drivers not found in versions of macOS prior to High Sierra.

So....my Mini was running El Capitan.
Boot up and launching of applications was a bit slow - so if I haddecided to upgrade to an expensive SSD to speed things up (and stayed on El Capitan), it would not have worked????
Has anybody tried to do that and can confirm that this is actually true?

 

[hoody]

Thanks Ian. Here's a screen shot of my storage: I've tried to get High Sierra and Mojave, but both come up as unavailable. Maybe because of lack of space. I've just looked and it doesn't show the numbers. Free is = 13.3Gb, Purgeable = 9.8, itunes = 1.41, Music creation = 1.65, Photo's = 2.12, Apps = 8.92, icloud drive = 10.8, Documents = 16.24, System 53.93.

 

[hoody]

krs,
Yes I'm running out of space. In the post above '42' I show the amount of space being used. So I now have 13.3 Gb left. I've ordered a new SSD of 2Tb, but I need to upgrade to at least High Sierra for the new drive to recognise it. That is according to a techie at Macfixit Australia. He says that the new SSD won't recognise an OS earlier than High Sierra. So I want end up with an internal SSD of 2Tb running at least High Sierra.

 

[krs]

Thanks Ian. Here's a screen shot of my storage: View attachment 32443 I've tried to get High Sierra and Mojave, but both come up as unavailable. Maybe because of lack of space. I've just looked and it doesn't show the numbers. Free is = 13.3Gb, Purgeable = 9.8, itunes = 1.41, Music creation = 1.65, Photo's = 2.12, Apps = 8.92, icloud drive = 10.8, Documents = 16.24, System 53.93.

Ok, things are slowly gelling in my head

You are trying to upgrade to High Sierra or Mojave on your existing 120 GB drive because the new SSD can't be usedwith your existing macOS software.

 

[MacInWin]

Hoody, that view is notoriously inaccurate. Can you do a right click (cmd-click) on the internal drive, then Get Info and report what it says for available space in the resulting window?

 

[krs]

krs,
Yes I'm running out of space. In the post above '42' I show the amount of space being used. So I now have 13.3 Gb left. I've ordered a new SSD of 2Tb, but I need to upgrade to at least High Sierra for the new drive to recognise it. That is according to a techie at Macfixit Australia. He says that the new SSD won't recognise an OS earlier than High Sierra. So I want end up with an internal SSD of 2Tb running at least High Sierra.

If that is true, then you would need an external "non-SSD" larger than the 120GB internal you have now.
Clone your internal to that external.
Boot upon the external (non-SSD)
Upgrade to High Sierra or Mojave
Install your new 2TB internal
Clone back from the (larger than 120 GB external) to the new 2TB APFS formatted internal.

That should work - woul be good to have a complete backup before oing that.

 

[krs]

Hoody,
I'm not sure if you never found High Sierra or Mojave to download, or if you downloaded the installer but then could not actually install the software.
If it's the former, see if this helps any - supposedly download links from Apple;

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Use an external drive or secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install macOS.

support.apple.com

 

[pm-r]

but we're used to getting ripped off over here. We don't have the competition to force prices down.

A quick google search shows your prices aren't really too bad and many are close to what we might have to pay in Canada,

And as mentioned, you probably don't need any expensive fast SSD for storage or backup needs.


- Patrick
=======

 

[hoody]

Hoody, that view is notoriously inaccurate. Can you do a right click (cmd-click) on the internal drive, then Get Info and report what it says for available space in the resulting window?

Hi Jake,
I put this in post 44.
Here's a screen shot of my storage: View attachment 32443 I've tried to get High Sierra and Mojave, but both come up as unavailable. Maybe because of lack of space. I've just looked and it doesn't show the numbers. Free is = 13.3Gb, Purgeable = 9.8, itunes = 1.41, Music creation = 1.65, Photo's = 2.12, Apps = 8.92, icloud drive = 10.8, Documents = 16.24, System 53.93.
Edit to add:
Macintosh HD:

Available: 13.31 GB (13,313,773,568 bytes)
Capacity: 120.1 GB (120,101,797,888 bytes)
Mount Point: /
File System: Journaled HFS+
Writable: Yes
Ignore Ownership: No
BSD Name: disk1
Volume UUID: F2718FF2-3501-3962-B79C-D14C2FF4D432
Logical Volume:
Revertible: Yes (no decryption required)
Encrypted: No
LV UUID: E19564C0-0900-4089-BF3E-8E1776067A8D
Logical Volume Group:
Name: Macintosh HD
Size: 120.47 GB (120,473,067,520 bytes)
Free Space: 18.9 MB (18,948,096 bytes)
LVG UUID: FC8945D4-9338-4201-A4E6-549CAF67237E
Physical Volumes:
disk0s2:
Device Name: APPLE SSD SD0128F
Media Name: APPLE SSD SD0128F Media
Size: 120.47 GB (120,473,067,520 bytes)
Medium Type: SSD
Protocol: PCI
Internal: Yes
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
Status: Online
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
PV UUID: 80E7883C-D037-4020-B174-499277C36F34

 

[hoody]

Ok, things are slowly gelling in my head

You are trying to upgrade to High Sierra or Mojave on your existing 120 GB drive because the new SSD can't be usedwith your existing macOS software.

Yes, but I've got two opposing views on the need to upgrade the old drive first.

 

[hoody]

If that is true, then you would need an external "non-SSD" larger than the 120GB internal you have now.
Clone your internal to that external.
Boot upon the external (non-SSD)
Upgrade to High Sierra or Mojave
Install your new 2TB internal
Clone back from the (larger than 120 GB external) to the new 2TB APFS formatted internal.

That should work - woul be good to have a complete backup before oing that.

I have a 1Tb external that is also close to full. I have a 2Tb on order, so if all else fails I'll do that. I have the current (nearly full) external drive with CCC on it.

 

[MacInWin]

Hi Jake,
I put this in post 44.
Here's a screen shot of my storage: View attachment 32443 I've tried to get High Sierra and Mojave, but both come up as unavailable. Maybe because of lack of space. I've just looked and it doesn't show the numbers. Free is = 13.3Gb, Purgeable = 9.8, itunes = 1.41, Music creation = 1.65, Photo's = 2.12, Apps = 8.92, icloud drive = 10.8, Documents = 16.24, System 53.93.

Hoody, again that image and space report is notoriously inaccurate. You got that image by using "About This Mac" and then "Storage" and that is known to be inaccurate. The Get Info process I described is much more accurate about what is really going on with the drive. On my own system there is a 3Gb difference between the two right now.

 

[hoody]

Hoody, again that image and space report is notoriously inaccurate. You got that image by using "About This Mac" and then "Storage" and that is known to be inaccurate. The Get Info process I described is much more accurate about what is really going on with the drive. On my own system there is a 3Gb difference between the two right now.

Sorry Jake. Here goes:
Macintosh HD:

Available: 13.31 GB (13,313,773,568 bytes)
Capacity: 120.1 GB (120,101,797,888 bytes)
Mount Point: /
File System: Journaled HFS+
Writable: Yes
Ignore Ownership: No
BSD Name: disk1
Volume UUID: F2718FF2-3501-3962-B79C-D14C2FF4D432
Logical Volume:
Revertible: Yes (no decryption required)
Encrypted: No
LV UUID: E19564C0-0900-4089-BF3E-8E1776067A8D
Logical Volume Group:
Name: Macintosh HD
Size: 120.47 GB (120,473,067,520 bytes)
Free Space: 18.9 MB (18,948,096 bytes)
LVG UUID: FC8945D4-9338-4201-A4E6-549CAF67237E
Physical Volumes:
disk0s2:
Device Name: APPLE SSD SD0128F
Media Name: APPLE SSD SD0128F Media
Size: 120.47 GB (120,473,067,520 bytes)
Medium Type: SSD
Protocol: PCI
Internal: Yes
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
Status: Online
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
PV UUID: 80E7883C-D037-4020-B174-499277C36F34

 

[hoody]

I still can't understand why I get the message that the download for High Sierra or Mojave isn't available on the Aus' or US app store.

 

[MacInWin]

Thanks, Hoody, that's better. It shows almost 19 GB free, 13 Gb available to you.

As far as the download goes, this article from Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208969
has a link to download HS. I followed the link, got to the Mac App Store and it downloaded just fine.

 

[hoody]

Thanks. Do you think that'd be enough for the upgrade?

 

[MacInWin]

To be honest, that's not enough to do almost anything. Is there any way to get rid of about 12-15 Gb from the drive, even if temporarily? You need to start with about twice what you have available now to be able to do what you want. Once the install is done, you can bring back what you take off.

 

[hoody]

I have icloud and google drive. I've always been confused about whether or not I can take "photo's" for example off the computer and then do the upgrade and download them from icloud. I also have that external CCC back up. Could I delete stuff off my internal drive, do the upgrade and then use the CCC back up to restore everything to the new drive?

 

[MacInWin]

The CCC approach seems more secure. Test to see that you can open the stuff you think may be removed, and if it's all safely usable on the CCC drive, you can go ahead with that approach. I'd be careful about the Photos stuff. If it's synced through iCloud, deleting it on the Mac may (probably will) replicate up to iCloud and they will be gone. Stick with the CCC clone, if it's clean and usable.

 

[hoody]

Thanks Jake, I'll get on it. Testing the back up will start soon. Now to spend half an hour waiting for the old spinner to wind itself up.