How to Clear Startup Disk in MAC – Don’t be alarmed. That happens to the best of them. Luckily, there’s a very easy way to fix this. Years of use and abuse can leave random data traces on the disk. Continue reading to see how to get an extra free space when you seem to have no more.
The situation
If you’ve never been through this, you’ll probably pass. In a moment, you are browsing through your computer, importing the photos of your vacation or downloading the new album of your favorite band, everything is normal and the world is a friendly place.
Then you realize. An unexpected window that appeared out of nowhere to inform you that your boot disk is full. The world is not so friendly anymore. Everything is dark, full and claustrophobic. Your computer has reached the limit and you are unable to buy a new one.
You used to treat your Mac like gold, but he’s been old, slow and crowded.
The hard and cold truth is that you got careless. You used to treat your Mac like gold, but he’s been old, slow and crowded. You said you needed everything in it, but you know that’s not true. Now, you have no choice, you have to find some way to remove that extra content. But how can you start doing that?
Before we start
Before we start cleaning up our startup disk, you’ll need another location to store your data: an external hard drive. If you have any external HD left, it’s time to use it.
If you have a condition, buy an external HD with one or two terabytes. Thus, you will be able to spend time without going through this problem again after you have performed this procedure.
If you don’t have an external HD left, you need to buy one. If you have a condition, buy an external HD with one or two terabytes. Thus, you will be able to spend time without going through this problem again after you have performed this procedure. We know that the cost is something bad, but the other two alternatives are: buy a new computer or delete important data.
Step one. Clean your Recycle Bin
That error message that appeared on your screen is a distress call. Your computer cries for help and you need to act fast to bring it to its best form again.
The quickest and easiest way to end the morbid obesity of your startup disk is to remove a few kilos from your Recycle Bin. Relaxed users who rarely empty their recycle bins should have gigas and gigas of unnecessary files occupying space on their disks.
If you fit into this situation, go to the Finder, press the Command-Shift-Delete keys and don’t regret it. Now, make it a daily or weekly habit.
Now, several of you may have already gained considerable space. That was easy! Don’t be cheerful, child, you haven’t come out of the dark yet.
Step two. Clean the Downloads folder and the desktop
The Recycle Bin is not the only place on your computer where a lot of unnecessary data is scattered. For some users, the desktop and the Download folder are gold mines of files that we put and do not organize anymore.
If something has been there for a long time, more than a week, for example, it’s time to delete it or put it in a more specific place…
It is good practice to think that these two places are local for transient data. If something has been there for a long time, more than a week, for example, it’s time to delete it or put it in a more specific place, such as the Documents folder (or its external HD).
This is specifically true for the Downloads folder, if you insist on using your desktop as a local for your most used items, all right (it’s a normal practice, just means we can’t be friends) but at least make sure your Downloads folder doesn’t Become an endless abyss.
Organize your Downloads folder by modification date or date of last use. If you haven’t used something in the last 30 days, you probably don’t need it any more than you thought it did when you downloaded it.
Step three. Check your Movies folder
Everything, up to this point, has served as quick adjustments, but now it’s time to pick up the heavy weapons. We need to delete ten, twenty or even hundreds of gigabytes of data as fast as possible. If you want real impact, the best place is your movies folder.
Go to the Users/SeuNomeDeUsuario folder and click the Movies folder. Now, press Command-I and look in the upper right corner of the window that will appear, to see the amount of space that this folder is consuming (this may take a minute or two).
Video content is a monster when it comes to space and is able to consume a hard drive very fast.
When I did this on my Mac, I noticed that this directory is consuming 30Gb data. That is, no way, little space, but do not be amazed if its consume triple that. Video content is a monster when it comes to space and is able to consume a hard drive very fast.
Unload, but be careful
The first thing you need to do is rummage through your movies folder to see if there’s really anything you can throw away.
Multiple applications save data in this directory and there may be a lot you just don’t need. I usually have some screenshots, video, Screeny app and maybe some iMovie projects that just never got to see the light of day. Eliminate what you can and clean up your trash again. So you’ll have an idea of your progress.
I hope you have maintained some kind of organization, otherwise, you will have to search hard to know what can delete or not.
If there is still too much data you can’t miss, it’s time to unload those you haven’t used, for your external HD. But be careful. Many features used in video projects (images, videos, clips, etc.) are spread across this directory. I hope you have maintained some kind of organization, otherwise, you will have to search hard to know what can delete or not. Try to move your projects one at a time to your external disk and try to open them on another computer to see if they still work.
Once you have finished copying your projects and resources to the external HD, delete them.
Step four. Remove music, apps, and photos
Songs are other files that consume a lot of space, so repeat the same process with the music folder. Go to the Home/music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder and see if you can find some old albums you haven’t heard.
You will need to create three mental categories: Keep, play and move to the external HD. If your startup disk is still quite full, you’ll have to make some tough choices. If you have any music that was obtained by questionable means, now is a great chance to get back to honesty. There will always be Spotify.
Mobile applications
In your iTunes folder, you’ll notice that there are only songs and movies. There are also mobile applications. If the size of this folder is larger than 10GB, I bet you have more than a few IOS apps you use once a year or, if you doubt it, don’t even use it. Some apps here have been erased from your iPhone or iPad, but are still taking space from your MAC’s drive disk.
Some apps here have been erased from your iPhone or iPad, but are still taking space from your MAC’s drive disk.
To find the ones that are occupying more space, have the mobile apps folder organized by the size of the files present in it. My Briefcase has more than 11Gb. I have over 500 applications, with 19 of them occupying more than 100mb each. You’ll notice that these applications are usually games. I low several of them but hardly use them more than once.
If this description also suits you, open the iTunes folder, click the Apps folder on the sidebar, and start deleting the ones you use the most. You can even erase some of your iOS handsets while doing that, too.
Where else do you save your media?
Their movies and iTunes folder are traditionally the two biggest places on account of the media, so theoretically these steps must have given a good portion of the unnecessary files. Another obvious place is your photos folder, where IPhoto, Lightroom, and Aperture usually save data. Select everything you can and send it to your external hard drive.
Think of other directories or applications that might have large multimedia files (maybe your Dropbox folder?) and see what you can remove from there.
Step five. Clear the Caches
Caches are temporary files created to speed up certain tasks. The problem is, these temp files can take up enough space, over time. There are a number of third-party applications that charge a considerable amount to clean up your tmeporários files, but this is not something you can do on your own.
Click on the Finder application, then hold the Option key and click “Go” on the top bar. This will show the hidden Library folder. Click on it and browse to find the folder “caches”.
Since you’re here, organize the directory by the size of the files, like we did before, and see if you discover any gigantic directories. I found that the cache directory of Spotify (COM. Spotify. Client) is quite large, coming to have more than 4.5 GB! You can actually control the size that this directory can occupy by simply going to the Spotify application and, accessing the preferences, changing the maximum size.
Generally, you can delete a cache folder like this and it will have no problem, especially if it is caching some third-party application. To ensure, move the cache folder to your desktop and see if the application still works normally. If so, delete the files from the desktop, otherwise return them to the place where they came from!
Step six. Time to scan
So far, we’ve gone after the largest and most obvious places, searching for the big files hidden in the dark, taking big spaces, like a hungry giant. At that time, there are countless different places that we could go to remove more things: The folders applications, documents, Application Support, and countless others.
Instead of manually checking each of these places behind gigantic files, it’s time to get some help. There are several third-party applications that are able to scan your hard drive by problematic area. I personally recommend the Disk Wave because it is completely free, super fast and extremely easy to use.
Once you download it and run it, click on a disk and the application will start scanning it. From here, you will be able to identify the largest directories on your machine. You could even go after expensive apps that show visualizations of these directories, but this one, honestly, already takes care of the message and it didn’t cost a dime.
Be careful
When using an application like Disk Wave, be extremely careful. Just because a directory is taking up too much disk space doesn’t mean you can delete it. Your machine is filled with files of critical systems you will never want to touch.
The general rule is when in doubt, do not touch! User data takes a lot of space and is all generated by their actions, so it should be pretty easy to identify them based on the name of the applications and things like that. Unless you’re an expert, clean up your mess and let the operating system for the devices themselves take care of. They’re bred to take care of themselves.
How did you get more space?
I hope that after this step-by-step your startup disk is lighter and can operate without any unexpected warning messages. How much is free space enough? This value is different and unique for each configuration and user, but a general rule is: keep free from 15% to 20% of the total space of your hard drive, so everything works fine. If you get less than that, it’s time to reread this article and do the step-by-step again.
If you have done the step-by-step of this tutorial, leave a comment just below and inform us of the minors you have made to find those extra data that can be erased. How much space were you able to release?
