low on storage and I'm an idiot.. help

[danny watson]

so I'm on a macbook air .. only 120GB storage of which i have about 1.2gb left.. the yellow other section is 61GB of storage.. I've an external hard drive where I've moved everything i can.. I've run first aid and nothing happened.. i downloaded omnidisk but to be honest I've no idea what to do once its run.. what is safe to delete and what isn't ... I've had the mac over a year and cant afford a new one or to visit apple... help !!!

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Which version of Mac OS X & what did you move ? what type of files ? Be specific. Is your Trash empty? If you use iPhoto have you emptied it's Trash?

 

[danny watson]

Which version of Mac OS X & what did you move ? what type of files ? Be specific. Is your Trash empty? If you use iPhoto have you emptied it's Trash?

i moved all photos over.. there are a few left but not many and they are showing separately .. all deleted photos have been double deleted and trash is empty.. I'm on OS X El Capitan

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

So after this you only have 1.2GB of free HD space? Or have you freed up some space? Do you have any surplus applications you could uninstall?

How did you move the photos to the ext drive & are you using photos.app on the MB Air?

 

[danny watson]

ok you are really dealing with an idiot here.. years of working for companies with an IT dept !.. yes thats all i have left.. I've just checked and it says i have the following

Others - 57GB
Movies - 23Gb
Apps - 15GB
Audio - 11.26GB
Photo - 10.93 GB
Back ups - 24GB

i dragged them to external or iCloud.. I'm guessing I've left traces

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

When you launch OmnidiskSweeper you select Macintosh HD in the drive list & after you click Sweep you need to wait a fair while while it calculates which files take up how much space. The highlighted folder may initially be coloured red while Omnidisk is sweeping but might then change colour to purple as the individual folders & directories are swept & calculated so just watch & wait.

If you click on "Users" you will see your user account where you'll be able to navigate through the directories (movies/music/pictures/desktop etc etc) to see which files are taking up what space.

Also you aren't an idiot because you are asking for help rather than deleting stuff willy-nilly. You risk causing untold damage unless you are careful when it comes to removing files. You just can't remove important System files, only applications & your individual files that you've created or downloaded.

It's nearly 1am here & I need to go to bed ... look at the Omnidisk results & look for apps you don't need.

Other than this I will check back tomorrow.

 

[danny watson]

thats so helpful.. thanks so much ,... will report back in the morning your time .. thanks again

 

[danny watson]

so i ran omni again and the results make no sense ha ha
users is 65.7GB.. of which 58gb is library

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

So go deeper ... Users is 65GB ~> Library is 58GB ~> ?? What is in Library that's so large?

 

[danny watson]

30.1gb is mobile documents
21.0 is mail
819mb is containers

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

So the 10.93GB of photos, you wrote that these have been transferred to an external hard drive, is this correct?

Can you view them okay? It may be safe to delete the originals from your MB Air if they have been successfully transferred off to the ext HD.

What about the 23GB of Movies? If you put them on the external HD then combined with the photos, you can free up nearly 34GB of space?

 

[danny watson]

I'm trying to figure that out .. also trying to work out how to stop every photo my wife takes on her iPhone ends up on my mac ! if i turn off the iCloud setting on her phone will he lose the photos from her phone

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

No, they just won't be synced with the cloud so you'll need to connect your iPhone to your Mac to download any photos you want to be synced with your Mac since the cloud has been switched off.

This is what I do, however I use Dropbox to sync my photos to my Dropbox folder whenever I connect my iPhone to my Mac

 

[danny watson]

ah excellent.. I'm dreadful at cloud too...

 

[danny watson]

i need to find someone to give remote access to who can sort it out for me ha

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Are you near an Apple Store?

 

[danny watson]

no i will have to take a trip ... they charge so much tho

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

How did you go with freeing up space on your MB Air as per my previous advice?

 

[danny watson]

clearly I'm doing something wrong... i think I'm wasting your time .. i need someone to show me .. storage is still showing only 6.36GB left !

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

So you've increased your storage from 1.2GB to 6.36GB ... what have you deleted?