New to Mac...question about disc space?

Question

Hello,
I have never really used a Mac before, but I thought it would be interesting to give it a try. I bought a Powermac G4 that runs Mac OS X Tiger used from somebody. It has a 20 GB hard drive, but when I took it home, 18 GB were in use! After searching for what took up so much space, I found the Printers folder which had 8GB of stuff in it! I deleted some of the printers, since I don't plan to print with this computer anyway. The folder now has 950 MB in it, but the Hard drive only had 1 GB freed, even after emptying the trash. If the folder had 7 GB removed, how come only 1 GB was removed from the disc? What other things should I do to clear up space or do to check to see what is taking up so much space? Thanks!

Answer 1

I concur with the first responder. Wipe the hard drive and reinstall OS X. I'm hoping the person you bought the machine from gave you the Install Disc(s)...
If not, you might want to check eBay for a cheap copy of Tiger. I wouldn't buy it new since Leopard (10.5) is due out shortly.

Answer 2

What the hey did they put in the Printers folder? That should be less than 1 GB. Although I did tech support for both Dell and Apple, I still don't quite understand the ubiquitous term "wipe the drive". Maybe this means drag all the files to the trash and empty the trash. It could also mean erase the drive. Or maybe it means format the drive.

Often the idea of loosing all the data on a drive is not welcome by the owner. You may not have a convenient way to backup the data first. Even if most of the data came from a previous owner, you may want to keep some of it.

Another suggestion is a "clean install" (a term hanging on from the days of the Mac classic system) but you probably don't yet have enough space for a "clean install". Even if you can do a "clean install" (I think that means an archive install), you may not get rid of the problem. When the amount of data that was deleted does not seem to come close to the amount of recovered space on the drive, something odd is going on. You should boot to the OS X CD and open Disk Utility from the Installer menu. Then choose to Repair Disk (not repair disk permissions). If it says anything is wrong (any message except "the disk whatwhat appears to be OK"), run the repair again. After the second repair, if it still fails to say "Appears to be OK", you have serious corruption on the hard drive and you will either need a stronger disk repair application (such as Disk Warrior) or you must use Disk Utility to erase the drive.

As to the question of what else could be hogging the space, look into the various users' Movie, Music and Pictures folders. Trash anything you don't value and empty the trash.

If you bought the computer without getting any system CDs, you have learned an important lesson: computer without CDs is much less valuable than computer with CDs.

Answer 3

First-Did you empty the trash? You may have moved all the files there but the space won't be available until you empty it.

Defragmenting the drive would also be a good idea: probably long overdue.

Are you sure that there isn't a lot of stuff- the former user's data files, etc- that can be deleted?

And as the Rossem said- a clean install would help, especially after wiping the hard disk completely. That's what I would do. But I'm guessing that you may not have the original software CD's to reinstall all the applications.

Answer 4

you have a lot of sound suggestion from others right here, you will possibly be able to desire to perform a little issues What length is your hard disk (C: rigidity) do you comprehend that a short-term PRINT record can take over one hundred MB observing the complexity of the printout - pictures, fonts etc, this area is in simple terms needed till the checklist gets to the printer then this is recovered. So in spite of a small printout you need to nevertheless get multiple warnings, yet later all looks ok Pagefiles additionally take up disk area too. what are yours set too short-term internet information and cookies are the worst culprits additionally you notice your TEMP itemizing - in all hazard in the C:domicile windows itemizing = guess what this is for ?? definite for short-term information in simple terms - to no longer be saved previous your latest consultation, so information in there ought to flow, and depart it empty. Do you have many fonts?? those additionally take up room too, many BAcKup information, in the journey that your computing gadget is working great immediately, then final years are ineffective. there's a lot you're able to do to chop back disk utilization, do you examine to work out that each and everyone information are removed from folders when you UNInstall this methodology, whilst replaced into the final time you had your registry checked? maximum registry's are a lot extra beneficial than they might desire to be (a failure of UNInstalls no longer doing their pastime good - get a registry checker and examine it out. any folders on the C: rigidity that does no longer comprise put in classes - can they be moved to D: rigidity? those are in simple terms some issues to study

Answer 5

I would run the os x tiger install disk and start with a clean install. Get rid of all that crap.

Answer 6

do a clean install