How to declutter your Mac
Suddenly a dialog box pops up on your screen: 'Your Startup Disk is full'. It's the final confirmation of what you've been dreading - your hard drive has finally run out of space and now you've got to do something about it. The question is, what?
You might be shocked at seeing the message. When you booted up your shiny new Mac for the first time, you couldn't believe how much hard drive space there was - you were confident you'd never fill it up, and yet here you are, a matter of years (or even months) later, and you've gobbled up every last ounce of capacity.
Don't panic, though, because we'll show you everything you need to know to solve the problem. You'll learn to identify the tell-tale signs of a rapidly constricting drive, plus discover what files are likely to be the cause of your woes. You'll then be armed with 10 tips to free up space on your drive.
Once you've fought that fire, we'll reveal more permanent solutions to the problem of keeping your drive empty so it can do its job properly: from moving key libraries and other files to a second drive, to safely upgrading your existing system drive to a larger, faster model. It's all here, so read on to become a disk-cleaning wizard.
Where does all the space go?
With all that free space disappearing fast, you need to understand both where it's gone and the consequences of letting your hard drive fill up to its limits.
The first thing to understand is how your hard drive has become so full. The likelihood is you've installed a fair few applications, some of which you were trying out and forgot all about during those heady days when you thought that space would last forever. That can account for a few gigabytes of space easily, but it's only the tip of the iceberg.
Next, there are all those files you've downloaded from the internet via your browser, or received as email attachments. Again, it's easy to let them just pile up on the off-chance you might need them at some unspecified point. All well and good, but yet more gigabytes of precious drive space have gone in the meantime.
The biggest drain on your hard drive will, however, be your personal files, and specifically all those photos and videos you've uploaded from your brand spanking new camera and camcorder. Today's high resolutions come at a price - every 10-megapixel photo consumes around 4MB in JPEG format, or up to 15MB in raw format. That equates to anything from 400MB to 1.5GB for every 100 photos on your hard drive.
It's even worse when you look at all the camcorder footage you've got stashed away. The average one hour HDV tape holds 13GB of data, so it doesn't take long to gobble up hundreds of gigabytes with your original footage, never mind the final edited movie.
It doesn't end there either: your iTunes library can consume more than its fair share of space, what with your music collection, podcasts, movies and TV shows to handle.
You might also be surprised to learn how many duplicated files exist on your hard drive - it's bad enough having two or three copies of a file, but when that file is a 10GB movie you can quickly see how it is that the hard drive that looked virtually bottomless a few months ago is suddenly full to the brim.
Facing the consequences
It's therefore obvious that even the largest hard drive can quickly become overwhelmed with all those files you've been copying to it. Having acknowledged that this isn't just a problem for MacBook Air owners with a paltry 64GB of drive space, what are the tell-tale signs that your drive might be starting to reach its limits?
The first landmark isn't one that will necessarily trigger any alerts, and occurs when your drive nears 90% of its capacity. Your Mac needs at least 10% free space on the drive to help it keep files in a neat, contiguous order (a process known as defragmentation).
As your drive fills up and the defrag process grinds to a halt, your files start to get split up into multiple parts to fit the available space, ending up physically scattered all over your drive.
File fragmentation may not be an issue for newer solid-state drives (SSDs) due to their lack of moving parts and an ability to access any part of the drive almost instantaneously. But for the vast majority with traditional drives (HDDs) which utilise rotating platters and mechanical drive arms, fragmentation is the first tell-tale sign that all is not well.
You'll start to notice performance suffer as the drive works harder to read and write files. Your Mac becomes increasingly sluggish. You're not doing your drive's physical health any favours either since its moving parts have to work harder, increasing drive temperature and ultimately shortening its lifespan.
Running out of space
The next milestone is reached as the amount of free space drops below 1GB. Certain applications may start to display warning messages, and performance slows even further.
Your Mac itself will start to tell you the drive is full or almost full, and exhort you to start freeing up space. You'll also start to get error messages every time you try to copy large folders to your drive, informing you there's not enough drive space to complete the operation.
Push things further, and as your free space dips below 100MB you'll find things get even worse. Applications routinely 'borrow' tens or even hundreds of megabytes of space when running, and the most resource-intensive applications will start to complain loudly about a lack of drive space, or even refuse to start at all.
Eventually you'll reach the final point: there will be little or no disk space left at all. Applications won't even be able to launch, while those applications already running may suddenly grind to a halt or begin to quit unexpectedly. Hopefully you'll never reach this point: the time to take action is when your hard drive approaches the 90% full mark, before any warning messages start to appear.
Diagnose the problem
The first thing to do, then, is find out how much free space is left on your system drive. You'll then want to identify which files are taking up the most space on your drive - it's quicker and easier to deal with a handful of large files than to try and free up a relatively small amount of space by working with dozens or even hundreds of smaller files.
It's a relatively simple process to discover how much free space is left on your hard drive: open the Go menu in Finder and select Computer. Click your system drive to select it, then press Command + I. (Alternatively, right-click the hard disk icon in Finder's sidebar and select Get Info.)
On its own, this doesn't really tell you much - simply how much free space is left on the drive. While it's possible to use the Find option in Finder to hunt down those files taking up most space on your hard drive, a better bet is to use a tool like the visually appealing DaisyDisk or Disk Inventory X to find out where those space-hogging files are.
In the case of Disk Inventory X (a PPC app, therefore non-Lion systems only), fire up the program after installing it. Select your drive from the list and click Open Volume. Once the drive is scanned, you can quickly and easily locate the files taking up most space.
What Disk Inventory X will confirm is that the bulk of your files reside in the Users folder inside your Home folder. That's unsurprising seeing as this is where all your movies, photos, music and other files are likely to sit.
Now you've acknowledged there's an issue, identified the likely culprits and taken that all-important backup of your drive, you're ready to start tackling the problem.
Top 10 tips for freeing up space
Reclaim much-needed disk space by removing files you no longer need
01. Empty the trash
When was the last time you emptied your Trash folder? People often make the mistake of simply dragging files into the Trash and forgetting they're still there, continuing to take up precious space on your hard drive.
Assuming you're not foolish enough to use the Trash as some kind of half-way house for files you think you might need at a later date, the quickest way to free up much-needed space is to empty it.
Open the Finder menu and choose Empty Trash to do so - if some files refuse to vanish, repeat the process, holding down Option before you click Empty Trash to remove stubborn files.
02. Clear out downloads
If you regularly download apps and other files from the web you may find one easy way to free up a few gigabytes of space is to check the Downloads folder for files. Delete any you don't need, or drag the lot to the Trash - you can always download them again.
Mail users can also clear up space by deleting long-forgotten file attachments from their mail. These are stored in your personal Library/Mail Downloads folder - it's hidden in Lion, but you can access the Library folder from Finder: hold down the Option key as you click on Go and select Library. Deleting file attachments from here won't affect the original messages. .
03. Remove duplicates
One of the biggest causes of wasted file space is duplicate files. You'll be amazed how many copies of the same file could be clogging up your hard drive. Decent duplicate-finding tools, like Singlemizer, do more than just look for matching filenames - they check the file itself to make sure it's a genuine match.
Singlemizer (£6.99 from the App Store) offers a free trial that lets you perform 20 scans of your drive before registration is required. Simply select the drives or folders you wish to scan, and then leave it to do its work.
All deleted files are sent to the Trash, so until you empty it, you can still get them back.
04. Clear out the junk
You might be surprised at how much drive space is being taken up by files you've long forgotten about. Tracking them down can be difficult, which is where DaisyDisk comes in.
It simplifies the process of identifying large files on your drive, letting you identify and - if they're no longer needed - delete them too. Note you'll need to purchase the full version (£6.99, App Store) to actually delete the files from your drive.
05. Compress old files
If there are files you don't want to lose, but don't necessarily need quick and easy access to, consider compressing them into zip file archives, which - depending on the file type - could free up significant amounts of free space.
Don't try to archive everything in a single zip file. Instead, archive groups of related files or individual folders by selecting them in Finder and choosing File > Compress…
Once complete, delete the original files and folders. To restore the archived files, just double-click the zip file to automatically extract their contents.
06. Streamline your apps
How many apps have you installed that you've never or rarely used? Another way to free up space is to delete these unwanted programs from your drive.
Dragging the program icon to the Trash is a rather imperfect solution; instead, use the free AppCleaner.
Launch the program and click Applications to view all currently installed apps. Tick those you wish to remove and click Search. Deleting programs through AppCleaner ensures a large number of related files are deleted, along with the application itself.
07. Find similar apps
With the help of a site like http://alternativeto.net it's also possible to source alternative applications that take up less drive space than the applications you're using.
Take Adobe Reader for example - why install an app that takes up 450MB of drive space when you can get most of its functionality in Skim, which takes a up a trifling 13MB, instead? Download it from http://skim-app.sourceforge.net.
08. Clear out your browser
Your web browser can build up a significant amount of clutter over time too. All browsers make use of a cache, a special folder where material from websites is downloaded to speed up future browsing of the pages in question. Technically there's no limit to how big these grow, so if you don't empty it regularly, it can soon start taking up lots of drive space.
Thankfully, erasing the cache is a simple process. Safari users can select Safari > Empty Cache, while Chrome users should select Chrome > Clear Browsing Data, tick Empty the cache and click Clear Browsing Data again. Other browsers - like Firefox and Opera - work in a similar way.
09. Clean up after iLife
It's safe to say that media files - photos, videos and music - take up the most space on someone's hard disk. Before you discover how to safely move these to another drive to free up space, start by emptying the Trash in both iPhoto and iMovie - any files deleted in the application go here rather than the actual Trash folder, so expect to free up a large amount of drive space.
You can streamline things further by rebuilding databases - hold down Option+Command as you double-click the app icon to do so. Tick Reclaim unused disk space from databases to free up some extra space.
10. Take the lazy option
If all of this sounds like too much hard work, try an all-in-one tool like MacCleanse (£5.49, Mac App Store) instead.
This will clean out everything you need from within a single app, but be warned: it's possible to make a Mac unbootable if you go too far. Back up before you begin, just in case your cleaning proves to be overzealous.
Long-term solutions
You've cleared a bit of space, but now it's time to sort things out permanently
Hopefully you've now cleared enough space from your drive to help resolve any low disk space messages you've been getting, and to ensure your drive has at least 10% free space.
That's great in the short term, but unless you consider some more permanent solutions, the same problems will reappear. The simplest thing to do is to move as much of your data as you can to an external hard drive.
Network drives
Network drives act as a central repository for all of your networked computers' spare files, but don't work with all files (such as iMovie Events). Performance will also depend on the speed of your network - use wired or HomePlug connections as opposed to wireless where possible.
Most of your data will be stored inside your Home folder, which resides inside the Users folder on your system drive. By moving some or all of the data inside this folder to your external drive, you'll free up a significant amount of space depending on how many photos, videos and other large files you possess.
The obvious solution is simply to move your entire Home folder to your external drive. While it's technically possible, it's both fiddly and potentially dangerous. If you move the Home folder, then your external drive must always be attached or connected in order for you to log into your account when your Mac starts. If the drive is lost or damaged, you'd be locked out of your profile or - if you're the only user of your Mac - your entire computer.
A safer, better solution is simply to move enough files to free up a comfortable amount of space. Which files should you move? The obvious answer is the largest ones, but you also need to consider convenience: will your external drive always be plugged into your Mac?
If you're a MacBook user, you may not want to be tied to even the slimmest external drive in order to access your files. So it makes sense to ensure those files you can't do without are always accessible on your Mac's system drive, while less essential files are moved to external drives.
Span your media
Which files you decide to keep and which ones you move across ultimately depends on your personal preferences, but you'll probably find it's practical to leave the contents of your Documents folder where it is, while any files you've kept in the Downloads folder can be safely moved across to your external drive.
Where things may get tricky is with your media files - you may find yourself wanting permanent access to certain movies, photos or music, while others can be safely stashed away on your external drive.
When it comes to the contents of your iTunes library, your music, movies, podcasts and TV shows, you have two choices. To move the entire library across to your external drive, follow the step-by-step guide here.
If you'd like to split the library between your system drive and your external drive so that favourite tracks are always available, it's possible to span your collection across two or more disks without messing up your iTunes library.
To do this, install a free program called TuneSpan. The step-by-step guide below reveals all you need to know about using it.
When it comes to your iMovie video collection, it's possible to move selected movies from your Event Library to your external drive.
Fire up iMovie, then click the drive icon next to Event Library to see all available drives. Now Command-click on those Events you wish to move to select them. Finally, hold Command as you click and drag the Events to your external drive to move them to that drive and update iMovie's references.
They'll remain in the library, but will only be accessible when your external drive is connected and switched on.
How to span your iTunes folder across multiple drives
01. Pick tracks to move
Install TuneSpan and launch it. Select an external drive as the location to span selected iTunes content to. Then drag and drop tracks, albums or the entire output for a selected artist to the grey bar near the bottom of the screen. The bar shows the space freed.
02. Start Spanning process
Once enough space is freed, press Command+B to review the items you've added to your queue (press again to return). When ready, click the Span button. Read the warning before clicking Span again - you'll need to manually update the iTunes library for any missing tracks.
03. Spanning in practice
When the drive isn't present, TuneSpan can remind you of what tracks are unavailable in iTunes: select TuneSpan > Preferences > TuneSpan Helper and set both Allow to always run and Auto launch at login to Yes. Close and reopen TuneSpan: click Allow.
Manage iPhoto library
You're probably aware just how large your iPhoto Library file is (you'll find it in your Pictures folder). It's quite unwieldy, but what can you do about it? iPhoto supports multiple libraries, so one solution is to create different libraries for different groups of photos, allowing you to move some libraries to your external drive while keeping others to hand on your system drive.
Use iPhoto Buddy (free) to help manage and switch between multiple libraries in iPhoto quickly and easily. It's also possible to keep the size of your new iPhoto library down.
Before importing any photos, choose iPhoto > Preferences > Advanced tab, then untick Copy items to the iPhoto library. This prevents the photos being duplicated in your library unless you subsequently edit them (they're then duplicated into the library to protect the originals).
That's all well and good if you're just starting out with iPhoto, but if you've got a massive library already in place, packed full of photos you've already edited, what then?
One solution is to right-click the iPhoto Library file and choose Duplicate to create an exact copy. Rename it according to the subset of photos you wish to include (for example, 'Family holiday 2011') and then use iPhoto Buddy to open it in iPhoto. Remove all the photos and folders apart from your family holiday snaps (remember to empty the iPhoto Trash) and then marvel at this slimmer library. Simply repeat the process for each new library you wish to create.
When you're finished, delete the original library. You can now split the remaining libraries between your system hard drive and your data drive accordingly.
How to upgrade your Mac hard drive
Replace your Mac's drive with a bigger, faster model
Ultimately you might decide it's not convenient - particularly if you're a MacBook user - to store your data on a separate external drive to your Mac. If you want to keep everything on a single drive, your final option is to upgrade the drive inside your Mac with a bigger model.
The first question to ask is whether or not it's something you can do yourself. Macs aren't equal, and some models are easier to upgrade than others.
The benefits of upgrading yourself are typically that you get to choose the exact drive you want at a price that's cheaper than paying someone to do the upgrade for you. The downside is that you'll invalidate any warranty you have and could look to face a hefty repair bill if something goes wrong.
If the idea of upgrading doesn't put you off, you need to discover if your Mac is one of those models that can be upgraded, or upgraded without recourse to an Apple Service Provider. As a rule of thumb, Mac Pros and later MacBooks (MacBook Air not included) are the simplest to upgrade, Mac minis are considered somewhat difficult, while iMacs are - to all intents and purposes - impossible.
To see the process you'll need to follow to upgrade your Mac's hard drive by yourself, visit http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/ for a series of instructional videos. If your model isn't listed, or you don't like what you see, it may need to be upgraded by your local Apple Store or Service Provider. If they can help, you'll be tied into their choice of drive and will have to pay an additional premium for fitting.
Pick the right hard drive
It's important you pick the right type of hard drive for your Mac: that means SATA rather than IDE for all Macs since 2006. The other key consideration is that you pick the right size drive for your Mac - 2.5-inch for MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Mac Minis, and 3.5-inch for Mac Pros.
MacBook Airs don't use standard SATA drives - we cover this separately below. You then need to choose between a traditional hard drive (HDD) or the newer, much faster solid-state drive (SSD).
SSDs are unbelievably quick compared to their sloth-like rivals, consume less power and are silent in operation, which makes them a perfect fit for MacBooks. But all of these benefits come with a hefty premium attached. The sad, unpalatable fact is that a 64GB SSD will cost you the same as a 2.5-inch 750MB or 3.5-inch 2TB HDD (around £90-100). You'll get a major performance boost, but you won't solve your disk space problem.
There is a third way in the form of a 2.5-inch hybrid drive from Seagate. As its name suggests, the MomentusXT Hybrid combines traditional HDD storage with a tiny amount of SSD (4GB). Thanks to the drive's adaptive technology, your most frequently accessed files are placed on the SSD portion of the drive, which helps provide a notable performance improvement with reading (but not writing) files.
It's a lot less expensive at £80 for 500GB, but it's not all good news, particularly for MacBook owners. That's because the drive can cause some vibration and actually consumes more power than a traditional HDD drive.
Whatever type and size of drive you decide to purchase, there are some other considerations to make that will have an effect on the performance of your new drive. All 2011 Mac models utilise the newer SATA-600 (6Gbp/s) standard, so opt for a SATA-600 model over the older SATA-300 model if possible.
Other considerations
If you're buying a HDD, also look to replace your drive with a 7,200rpm model for maximum performance, although be aware this will generate more heat and consume more power than a slower 5,400rpm model. Also, look at the size of the onboard cache - a drive offering 32MB or even 64MB will outperform one offering 8MB.
If all of this sounds like too much hard work, we've dug out a few models that tick all the right boxes depending on your Mac. If SSD floats your boat, and you can afford the hefty premium, the Crucial 128GB M4 SATA-600 (£170) is worth considering. Mac Pro users will need a special adaptor, such as Icy Dock's MB-882SP (£12) to fit it.
Mac Pro users get the best deal in terms of value and capacity thanks to the fact that 3.5-inch drives are cheaper and more versatile than 2.5-inch models. 2TB drives are now widely available, and Hitachi's Deskstar 7K3000 ticks all the right boxes in terms of performance: 7,200rpm, SATA-600, 64MB cache. Expect to pay around £75.
1TB models are starting to make an appearance on 2.5-inch drives, but SATA-600 models are still a rarity, and come with a hefty price premium (expect to pay around £150 for a 1TB model).
If you can live with the slower SATA-300 standard, however, look at Western Digital's Scorpio Black range, one of the few to offer 7,200rpm and 16MB (as opposed to a measly 8MB) cache on its mobile drives. Its 750GB model costs around £73.
MacBook Air
As we hinted earlier, if you're looking to upgrade your MacBook Air's internal storage, it's a different kettle of fish altogether.
The 2010 and 2011 models both utilise SSD storage with mini-SATA connectors, so you'll need a special drive if you want to go down this route, and with a hefty premium to pay (as much as €1,400 for the Aura Pro Express 480GB from http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/) it's something you might want to reconsider.
Fitting your new drive
If you're upgrading your drive yourself, make sure you take one last Time Machine backup before you swap out your old drive for your new one. Once the new drive has been fitted, switch on your Mac.
Lion users should create a boot drive or disk; Snow Leopard users should insert their OS X install disc and hold down the C key.
Then it's a simple a case of following the step-by-step guide below to restore your latest backup to your new drive using Time Machine.
Once done, you'll be booted back into OS X as if nothing had happened, except now you'll be able to take advantage of the extra speed and larger size of your new hard drive.
How to restore your Time Machine backup
01. Prepare new drive
Open the Utilities menu and select Disk Utility. Click your drive, then either choose Partition, or Erase to set it up as a single drive. If selecting Erase, give the drive a name and click Erase again. Once the process is complete close Disk Utility to return to the main menu.
02. Select a backup
From the main screen either click Restore from Time Machine Backup (Lion) or select the option from the Utilities menu (Snow Leopard). Click Continue for it to detect your drive. Select the one with your backup and click Continue to view a list of available backups.
03. Select destination
Pick the latest backup from the list and click Continue. Select your new drive from the list and click Restore followed by Continue. Your last backup will now be restored to your new drive. Once done, restart your Mac and it should take you to your desktop.
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