My MacBook SSD is full. What are my options?
January 8, 2016 8:40 AM Subscribe
I am mostly a Windows guy, but I have a MacBook at home that's ended up getting more use than expected. We started using GarageBand and have a ton of photos and some videos as well. Now the smallish SSD is full. I plan to buy an external HD and move some stuff but am not that familiar with Mac file structures, so I don't know what's safe to move.
Money isn't really an issue, and I am a software developer so I'm ok with technical answers, though I only have used OS X as an end user. What sort of HD makes sense (wired, wireless, etc)? And which files can I safely move to that drive? I tried downloading a Mac disk space analyzer but it wants me to update OS X first and there ain't room :-)
As a bonus, I have all my photos in iPhoto but the base folder is a Dropbox folder (I set this up). I'd love to partition off some old photos but am hazy on how iPhoto wants me to do that. I guess I'm running up against the edges of the Mac "black box" where it's less obvious where things go and how the work internally.
Thanks!
Money isn't really an issue, and I am a software developer so I'm ok with technical answers, though I only have used OS X as an end user. What sort of HD makes sense (wired, wireless, etc)? And which files can I safely move to that drive? I tried downloading a Mac disk space analyzer but it wants me to update OS X first and there ain't room :-)
As a bonus, I have all my photos in iPhoto but the base folder is a Dropbox folder (I set this up). I'd love to partition off some old photos but am hazy on how iPhoto wants me to do that. I guess I'm running up against the edges of the Mac "black box" where it's less obvious where things go and how the work internally.
Thanks!
First things first- empty your Trash. Seems like a silly thing to say, but people often forget about it and stuff piles up in there. Done? OK.
Simple answer is to just get a bigger SSD in your laptop.
But, if you want to get an external, I would advise against trying to manage Photos (or iPhoto, if you're still on that) on an external drive. It consolidates everything into a single file*, making it a hassle to manage multiple libraries with it, and if you want to access your photos or import new ones on the road it's going to quickly become a nightmare. I'd recommend getting an external USB 3.0 drive , and archive your videos and Garage Band stuff on there, and don't overthink it.
* I know it's not really a single file, but Mac OS presents it that way.
posted by mkultra at 8:53 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Simple answer is to just get a bigger SSD in your laptop.
But, if you want to get an external, I would advise against trying to manage Photos (or iPhoto, if you're still on that) on an external drive. It consolidates everything into a single file*, making it a hassle to manage multiple libraries with it, and if you want to access your photos or import new ones on the road it's going to quickly become a nightmare. I'd recommend getting an external USB 3.0 drive , and archive your videos and Garage Band stuff on there, and don't overthink it.
* I know it's not really a single file, but Mac OS presents it that way.
posted by mkultra at 8:53 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
You can move documents, photos, and apps to an external drive just by dragging them over and they'll all be fine.
posted by zippy at 9:00 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by zippy at 9:00 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
If you have Amazon Prime, you can back up unlimited photos to their cloud. I also back them up to two hard drives and keep them in two different places. Wirecutter has recommendations for hard drives... I use a desktop drive at home and a couple of portable ones for storing at work and at my parents' house.
As far as the Photos library being one file, yes, but if you right click (or control click) on the Photos Library in your pictures folder, you can choose Show Package Contents and see all the folders that are actually in there. I back up the Masters folder and then keep adding in the new dates every time I back up.
posted by Huck500 at 9:03 AM on January 8, 2016
As far as the Photos library being one file, yes, but if you right click (or control click) on the Photos Library in your pictures folder, you can choose Show Package Contents and see all the folders that are actually in there. I back up the Masters folder and then keep adding in the new dates every time I back up.
posted by Huck500 at 9:03 AM on January 8, 2016
Note I don't use iTunes or Garageband, so I'm only talking about filesystem fine. Drag and drop on Macs just works, even for applications.
posted by zippy at 9:04 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by zippy at 9:04 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
See also the suggestions in this AskMe entitled "I want to store my 200GB of photos in the cloud. Only in the cloud." The OP there was generally advised not to go "only in the cloud" but to have a local backup drive. But your daily access would be to the cloud solution.
posted by beagle at 9:20 AM on January 8, 2016
posted by beagle at 9:20 AM on January 8, 2016
Best answer: You need a disk space analyzer. I'm partial to DaisyDisk, but I see the latest version requires OS X 10.10 so that may not work for you. The old school way to do it is via the Unix command line. Open a terminal and run du -m / | sort -nr | less, wait a couple of minutes, and you'll have a sorted list of how many megabytes every directory takes. It's recursive, so / will naturally be the biggest.
The short answer on what is safe to move is anything in ~/Documents. Unfortunately a lot of stuff tends to get written into ~/Library. Most of that is also safe to move but requires a bit of hackery. Steam games, for instance, can be stored anywhere but you have to find the preference in the app. Sometimes I go in and move a Library directory to external storage and replace it with a symlink. That usually works but is definitely hacky.
As for what drive to get, I'm partial to 2.5" USB 3.0 drives. They are small, don't require a power adapter, and are reasonably reliable. Wirecutter is currently recommending this 2TB Seagate drive. (Don't get the 4TB, it's more platters.)
posted by Nelson at 9:42 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
The short answer on what is safe to move is anything in ~/Documents. Unfortunately a lot of stuff tends to get written into ~/Library. Most of that is also safe to move but requires a bit of hackery. Steam games, for instance, can be stored anywhere but you have to find the preference in the app. Sometimes I go in and move a Library directory to external storage and replace it with a symlink. That usually works but is definitely hacky.
As for what drive to get, I'm partial to 2.5" USB 3.0 drives. They are small, don't require a power adapter, and are reasonably reliable. Wirecutter is currently recommending this 2TB Seagate drive. (Don't get the 4TB, it's more platters.)
posted by Nelson at 9:42 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Best answer: OmniDiskSweeper is free, and will work with OS versions back to 10.8. It will just do a quick scan of folders & subfolders and show you what's taking up space. I'm sure it goes without saying that you shouldn't delete things if you're not sure what they do.
If you get an external drive make sure you format it in Disk Utility to HFS+ if you're planning on moving large OS X specific stuff (like projects from GarageBand or iMovie, or libraries from iPhoto/Photos). Drives that are formatted for Windows are fine for JPGs or Word documents coming from a Mac but other things can get hosed.
posted by bcwinters at 9:50 AM on January 8, 2016
If you get an external drive make sure you format it in Disk Utility to HFS+ if you're planning on moving large OS X specific stuff (like projects from GarageBand or iMovie, or libraries from iPhoto/Photos). Drives that are formatted for Windows are fine for JPGs or Word documents coming from a Mac but other things can get hosed.
posted by bcwinters at 9:50 AM on January 8, 2016
Which disk space software did you use? I'm partial to GrandPerspective which still works great despite having last been updated in 2012.
posted by supercres at 9:52 AM on January 8, 2016
posted by supercres at 9:52 AM on January 8, 2016
Best answer:
posted by adamrice at 9:52 AM on January 8, 2016
- If your OS is new enough to run Apple's Photos app instead of iPhoto, do that. They use the same photo library. The app itself is vastly smaller and will free up a lot of disk space.
- You can have multiple photo libraries. If you're hosting them all in Dropbox, Dropbox lets you selectively de-sync certain files or folders to your desktop, to save space that way.
- Videos are obviously very space-intensive, and because I also have a smallish SSD, I've kept them off it and on an external HD.
- Tunespan is really handy for relocating some of the files you use in iTunes to a different device.
- There's nothing mysterious about Apple's directory structure: you can traverse it in the Finder and see what goes where. Apple is picky about the Applications folder, and it tries to offer reasonable defaults for your Home folder, but user files can go anywhere.
- I would not mess around with a wireless hard drive. I've considered getting one of those special SD cards that sits flush with my SD card slot, but I'm using a spinny mechanical disk for now.
posted by adamrice at 9:52 AM on January 8, 2016
Response by poster: Thanks everyone, all helpful suggestions. I think I'm going to go with a USB drive like what Nelson linked, and then try splitting my photos into multiple libraries - hopefully it's easy to do (I'm not at the Mac right now). DaisyDisk is actually the drive analyzer I picked when I was looking for one; I'm very visual and like the way they represent things. But I also took a Unix admin class like a zillion years ago so I'll also carefully poke around a command line a bit.
It helps to know that I can theoretically just move stuff in the UI and it should "just work". That's kind of what I expect from Macs but all my plans to dig deeper into How OS X Works keep getting waylaid by my flood of Windows work tasks. This will be a good time to get deeper into the Mac. I love using it in general.
posted by freecellwizard at 10:01 AM on January 8, 2016
It helps to know that I can theoretically just move stuff in the UI and it should "just work". That's kind of what I expect from Macs but all my plans to dig deeper into How OS X Works keep getting waylaid by my flood of Windows work tasks. This will be a good time to get deeper into the Mac. I love using it in general.
posted by freecellwizard at 10:01 AM on January 8, 2016
External drives can be a bit of a nuisance. Do you know what model of MacBook do you have? Older models could have their drives swapped out with something with a larger capacity.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:34 AM on January 8, 2016
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:34 AM on January 8, 2016
Chiming in to suggest creating a Smart Search in Finder to look for large files. Then save that search and you can occasionally monitor it and delete, archive, those files. I have a few with queries like 100MB > Media Files.
posted by terrapin at 12:58 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by terrapin at 12:58 PM on January 8, 2016
Why not just upgrade the internal drive? even macbook airs and the retina pros can be upgrade. OWC sells them for example, and they're not _that_ bad to install.
posted by emptythought at 6:30 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by emptythought at 6:30 PM on January 8, 2016
Also there's a Cache directory somewhere that can be totally cleaned out.
posted by bendy at 7:07 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by bendy at 7:07 PM on January 8, 2016
Turn on iCloud Photo Library and your photos will be stored in Apple's cloud with only thumbnails on your Mac, or optionally with as many originals as space is available.
If you sync an iPhone or iPad to his Mac then its iTunes library has a copy of all your apps, so moving that to an external drive can save tons of space. Similarly, turn on iCloud backups to save that SSD space.
These have been the big space-savers when my Mac has filled up.
posted by nicwolff at 7:23 PM on January 8, 2016
If you sync an iPhone or iPad to his Mac then its iTunes library has a copy of all your apps, so moving that to an external drive can save tons of space. Similarly, turn on iCloud backups to save that SSD space.
These have been the big space-savers when my Mac has filled up.
posted by nicwolff at 7:23 PM on January 8, 2016
In terms of hardware, you could take a look at Transcend JetDrive. It fits into the little slot on the side of the MacBook, and is totally unintrusive. It comes in 64G, 128G, and 256G. Nowhere near the size of an external disk, but very handy for some extra internal storage. I've got the 128G in my MacBook Air.
posted by veedubya at 9:06 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by veedubya at 9:06 PM on January 8, 2016
Seconding the Transcend JetDrive Lite (if you have a MacBook with an SD slot). It comes in versions up to 256GB for most MacBooks. Since it's designed to fit flush with the side of the case (so that you can leave it in all the time) and the SD slot depth is a bit different on different MacBook models, you do have to make sure that you get the right version. Check the table on this page to make sure that you're getting the right one. If your MacBook doesn't have an SD card slot, then it's probably an older one in which you can swap out the internal drive.
posted by klausness at 5:15 AM on January 10, 2016
posted by klausness at 5:15 AM on January 10, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
Then, before I tried migrating anything off my Mac, I'd reboot into Recovery Mode and use Disk Utility to make a compressed image of my SSD, stored on my new hard disk. It's simpler than Time Machine and I have more confidence in the backup. (I still use Time Machine for automatic incremental backups though).
Only after I had a full SSD image safely stored away, would I start moving user data around, telling iPhoto to move images, etc.
posted by ryanrs at 8:52 AM on January 8, 2016