How can I check how the Hard Drive space is being used?
Hi
I wanted to find out exactly how my mac hard drive is using up the space. You know...like in Windows you can check out the "add/remove programs" and see how many mb or GBs are being spent on which program etc etc...
How can I do that with my mac?
*p.s.: in PCs, they often crash when you don't have much hard drive space left. I don't have much space left on my mac and it's working beautifully(which is great), but I was wondering if there's a "danger limit" to it. Would my mac start acting uncomfortably once it only has about 1 GB left?
I wanted to find out exactly how my mac hard drive is using up the space. You know...like in Windows you can check out the "add/remove programs" and see how many mb or GBs are being spent on which program etc etc...
How can I do that with my mac?
*p.s.: in PCs, they often crash when you don't have much hard drive space left. I don't have much space left on my mac and it's working beautifully(which is great), but I was wondering if there's a "danger limit" to it. Would my mac start acting uncomfortably once it only has about 1 GB left?
Comments
try http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/
And yes, try to keep more disk space free - for performance (disks are slower when fuller, due to fragmentation and sector on inside of platter vs. outside) and virtual memory needs free space. MonoLingual might be an option for you as well - removes bloated languages from apps. Look for iDVD themes, Garageband sound packs, printer drivers you don't need, etc.
cheers
Nathan
One of the best free utils for OS X ever - WhatSize.
try http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/
And yes, try to keep more disk space free - for performance (disks are slower when fuller, due to fragmentation and sector on inside of platter vs. outside) and virtual memory needs free space. MonoLingual might be an option for you as well - removes bloated languages from apps. Look for iDVD themes, Garageband sound packs, printer drivers you don't need, etc.
cheers
Nathan
thanks Nathan.
I'm lovin' the program!
and
http://jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
look like better alternatives to WhatSize (I haven't tried them, as I don't have a Mac yet
http://www.derlien.com/
and
http://jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
look like better alternatives to WhatSize (I haven't tried them, as I don't have a Mac yet
thanks. But I'm happy with Whatsize. It tells me exactly what I want with exactly the way I want to see it. So simple and quick. So I'm happy. I could use that PC one when I boot my MBP with Windows I guess.
And yes, try to keep more disk space free - for performance (disks are slower when fuller, due to fragmentation and sector on inside of platter vs. outside) and virtual memory needs free space.
Sure.
But the lack of harddrive space is not a problem as such in Mac OS X.
To be able to figure out "what will go wrong and what I can do (or what has to be done) to fix it" for our in-house maintenance purposes I tend to do a lot of stupid things with my Mac's. One is that I let the boot drive of my office-Mac (a 1,42 GHz Dual G4) fill up _totally_ during normal use. I've been doing this (on and off) since the early days of 10.2.
This gives me frequent dialog windows with error messages in the style of "your harddrive is almost full" and Finder windows show 0 kb of empty space left.
But because this is what I was aiming at, I just let the OS sort it out the best it can. (Eventually, maybe after days or weeks, or maybe even directly if I really need the space, I delete some files only to free up some space for the time being. In a few days I have 0 kb of free space left again.)
Still; the computer is perfectly usable all the time and I _notice_ no degradation in speed.
Never a crash.
It just keeps on rollin'.
NOTE: This is of course not how to use your computer the way it was intended to. We have this need for maintenance information, but few do. So, please use your own computer "normally" to stay out of (possible) trouble.
-matts
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22694