Cleaning up your hard drive!
This is a great tip that was submitted anonymously. It is a free application called WhatSize and it shows you exactly what is taking up space on your hard drive. You can very quickly browse through your hard drive and see useless files. After months of intense usage of your computer, it is incredible to see how the hard drive fills up with useless stuff. I wasn't sure how well the application would help clear up space, but it is incredible. Download here on MacUpdate.
posted by Frederic Tremblay at
4/15/2007
24 Comments:
This is really sweet cause i was actually trying to find out this info a couple months ago when i was cleaning out my computer.
here is another easy to use app to clean out you HD.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7758
its for all the extra languages that are installed on you HD.
and i have about 1,5 gigs of printer drivers installed, pretty useless. no app for that, but you can just chuck them away.
and here is one more, http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582
onyx, to clean out the rest.
this is cool, but for the less experienced computer user, is there any way to know what you can get rid of? and is a mach_kernel a virus, because im pretty sure i got a virus called a kernel on my old laptop...??
wow...I didn't even know how much I would find and delete...this program is so simple but so amazing. I thought I could pretty much do the same thing through the finder because the program sounded like it didn't do much, but it finds all sorts of hidden files too...many of which just aren't doing too much for you.
I had a widget called the "Magic Hat" that hides files from the finder in case you don't want them to be found, and was alarmed to find that this application found them right away! Oh well, at least I still have my hander dandy paper-shedder that does secure erases from the same widget provider... Check out http://www.interdimensionmedia.com/widgets/ for some cool widgets and the shredder...the shredder works well with WhatSize because I can find some of those sensitive files that I forgot were hanging out on my computer and get rid of them for good ;)
thanks for the cool program macgeek, ur saving my harddrive and the trouble of someone else finding my hidden files before I do...
Hey,
I'm not anonymous!
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sander,
are the printer drivers neccesary if you want to install a printer in the future? Because I don't have one now but I plan on getting one in the future.
I want to echo samantha's question about how do we know which files are useless?
Like Samantha, I'm wondering how to know which files are ok to get rid of?
Cool, but I have no idea, what can be deleted or not!
Sorry Freeze I said anonymous. The email you sent me contained no name.
As for the useless files, if you're not sure, it's best not to erase anything from the system. I like it a lot to sort through the files I downloaded or installed myself. What I think is the best is that everything is sorted by the biggest to the smallest files.
MacGeek
Freeze :
all those printer drivers are on the OSX install disk, so if you get rid of them but need them later you can get it from there, but when you buy a printer you usualy get an instal disk. or get the drivers from the site of the makers of the printer.
Samantha:
there are no viruses for the mac atm. there are some for OSX9 i think. but if you wanna look for them, here is a free anti virus prog. for OSX
http://www.markallan.co.uk/clamXav/
Tallstar:
The files i know to get rid of are, the languages, printerdrivers and the demo songs for garageband, this will not affect the system, ofcourse do not get rid of lets say english language, since you might use that.
If you are going to reinstal OSX you can choose to install everything or go for a custom install, if you go for the custom install yo ucan choose to NOT install the languages and so on.
and i would suggest looking for a good site and posibly forum that updates allot about apple. there are some dutch one's that i check for latest news and also about viruses (if they ever make one)
haha thats alright MacGeek,
Sander, Thanks alot, thats good to know and 1G+ saved
Hey, good tip, MacGeek.
Someone asked about "mach_kernel" and I still don't know what it is, but I did a quick search on it and this is what I got:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805
Apparently, it's one of the invisible files that is vital to properly running Mac OS X, so don't move it! There are a list of other files not to delete either.
thanks sander!
Sander:
Monolingual worked amazingly... I cleared up several gigs worth of space in just the languages alone. I was wondering what was removeable on the input menu and architectures without getting into trouble. Or if they don't free up much space at all I won't even bother.
Freeze:
sorry, don't know what else you can chuck away, i do use onyx and tiger cache cleaner (on medium) to get rid of useless files. http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/tigercachecleaner.html
but i gues you could get rid of some programma's you hardly ever use that you get with OSX. or look of the the trial versions of microsoft outlook, i had those on my HD... pretty useless since the trial period already ran out.
i havent looked for more ways to clean out my HD, i do have a 250 gig one :D but all these tips given here should save a hell of a lot of space anyways
oh lucky you! i have a third of that space haha... ill definently follow those tips though thanks again for the help
Samantha and Cory:
A kernel, in computer terminology, is sort of like the software brain of a computer. It allows programs to talk to each other and to the hardware. Wikipedia has more details if you're curious. Mach is a specific type of kernel that's used by OSX.
How is it possible to delete all the drivers on your computer with OnyX? And is there a way to make sure it does not delete the driver for my printer?
Also, is it okay to delete .localized and .DS_Store?
Thanks Sander! Deleted the printer drivers. I couldn't find the languages or garage band demo's though. And noticed that the 2nd biggest chunk of space is taken up by iWork. Hate to sound dumb, but ... what is iWork and what do you use it for? (I realise this might be a totally different thread, though... feel free to redirect me to the relevant place!) Thanks again.
mac geek i don't know how to use it its a bunch of words that i dont know what there for I dont know if i should delete some things because i dont want to mess up my macbook
iWork
http://www.apple.com/iwork/
and if you are not sure if you can rid of a file look it up on google or just let it be..
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home