Slimming down HDD space to get ready for SSD

[UncleSchnitty]

I'm trying to slim down my HDD as much as possible to get ready to switch over to SSD for my system drive. Right now I have about 125gb used up on that drive. I keep all my music and movies on a separate hd, basically the only things I keep on the system drive are OSX and applications.
My problem is I would like to slim it down more because the SSD I am getting is only going to be 256gb. When I open up About This Mac>Storage its showing that I have:
17.72GB Audio
8.5GB Movies
4.15GB Photos
6.4Gb Apps
88.79GB Other

Now I understand the apps is really user specific but is the rest all the OS? Do people have comparable numbers on their system drive? I really don't know where the audio, movies, photos and other are coming from. This may be a question that is too user specific but I thought I would ask since people here are usually helpful. Thank you.

 

[Weaselboy]

Here is mine for comparison. In Finder I have about 9GB of music and 8GB of photos. Yours does seem way high for your system.

Although, even a new Mac without any photos or music will show storage in those categories. All the small icons and videos in the OS itself get counted in the total.

 

[UncleSchnitty]

Your screenshot seems more reasonable. The one thats got me boggled is the "Other" being at 87.44 gb. The other stuff I pretty much traced back to application libraries and such and I don't really want to touch that. I understand that things that dont fit into audio, movies... goes to other but that just seems way to high

 

[Weaselboy]

Your screenshot seems more reasonable. The one thats got me boggled is the "Other" being at 87.44 gb. The other stuff I pretty much traced back to application libraries and such and I don't really want to touch that. I understand that things that dont fit into audio, movies... goes to other but that just seems way to high

You might try something like Omni Disksweeper to look over your drive. It really helps pinpoint what is munching your space.

 

[wonderspark]

In my case, the extra files are just things I've got on my desktop or stored in Documents that I don't have stored elsewhere for the moment. I'm usually only using about 100GB of the 256GB on the SSD, when things are filed where they belong.

This is with Adobe CS5, CS5.5 and CS6, as well as FCP X, Motion, Compressor, Office for Mac and a few other programs installed.

I don't see what the problem is, having about half the SSD open? If it were 80% used, then there would be reason for concern, in my opinion.

 

[UncleSchnitty]

Its more about the fact that I don't know whats taking up the space then the space its self. Since I have gone thru and deleted unused apps, I use a secondary drive for media there isn't really a need for all that to be taken up. I don't want to say "well it will fit" now and down the road need room and have 2x the files to figure out.

 

[philipma1957]

Its more about the fact that I don't know whats taking up the space then the space its self. Since I have gone thru and deleted unused apps, I use a secondary drive for media there isn't really a need for all that to be taken up. I don't want to say "well it will fit" now and down the road need room and have 2x the files to figure out.

We better get a bigger boat applies (see the movie JAWS).

500 gb ssds can be had at decent prices if you wait.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...UTF8&qid=1382894341&sr=8-1&keywords=500gb+ssd

even a 750gb ssd


http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...UTF8&qid=1382894341&sr=8-1&keywords=500gb+ssd



I have a 960 gb ssd


http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-I...8&qid=1382894445&sr=8-2&keywords=crucial+m500

this can be had for 500 on a sale

 

[UncleSchnitty]

I don't know what I did, maybe apple ran a maintenance scrip in the background but as soon as I opened omnidisksweeper my "Other" dropped in half to 45gb... I didn't actually touch anything in the utility other than sweep selected drive. Everything is running fine so I guess chalk it up to luck.
Ive been watching SSDs on Newegg and the 250gb seems to be what I need right now. But thanks philipma1957 Ill keep an eye on those.
p.s. its "were gonna need a bigger boat" (jaws is one of my favorite movies)

 

[Demigod Mac]

Very easy to find out where the junk is hiding on a Mac.

1. Go to the hard drive's root folder.

2. Switch the view to List View

3. View > Show View Options

4. Check the "Calculate all sizes" button

5. Click the Size column to sort the folders by size.​

It might take a while for the size calculations to go through, so keep the folder open until they're done. Keep digging through your folders and repeatedly use this procedure (or to make it easier, set this as the default behavior for all folders in View Options). You'd be surprised at all the junk data you'll find hiding on the drive.

Will you have a traditional HDD on the side or just going solo with the SSD? You can use symbolic links to seamlessly move your Documents/Pictures/Movies/Music/Downloads folders to a secondary hard drive (which is what I did with my SSD)

Other places to check for data:
* Library/Printers (printers you don't need)
* Library/Application Support/Garageband (if you don't use Garageband)

 

[DeeEss]

Speaking of slimming down HD size. Check out the App called Daisy Disk. I bought it and it is a great app for doing just that. I think this should be built into OS X.

 

[Weaselboy]

Very easy to find out where the junk is hiding on a Mac.

4. Check the "Calculate all sizes" button

That can be helpful, but it won't show hidden files, and that is often where the problem is.

 

[UncleSchnitty]

I will/do have a secondary HDD that will remain in place. That actually does store my movies/music/downloads/pictures/docs. Thats really why I was so surprised at the amount my sys drive was taking up since it really only stores applications. I'm just trying to slim down as much as possible on the sys drive. A lot of the junk I found was library preferences for applications I deleted ages ago (man did blackberry hide a tone of files)
I'm sort of waiting for Onyx to come out for Mavericks for its maintenance(I really don't care about the customizing features of it)

 

[UncleSchnitty]

wonderspark: I would love to see a picture of your storage setup hah also do you like FCPX more than the old Studio? I have been too stubborn to upgrade because when it first came out it looked like they wattered it down too much. Sorry thats really of topic

In my case, the extra files are just things I've got on my desktop or stored in Documents that I don't have stored elsewhere for the moment. I'm usually only using about 100GB of the 256GB on the SSD, when things are filed where they belong.

This is with Adobe CS5, CS5.5 and CS6, as well as FCP X, Motion, Compressor, Office for Mac and a few other programs installed.

I don't see what the problem is, having about half the SSD open? If it were 80% used, then there would be reason for concern, in my opinion.

Also I think I got my system drive to a more manageable size.

 

[handheldgames]

Grab the free app GrandPerspective. It will give you a much better assessment of where your space is being used.

 

[haravikk]

Slimming down on your disk usage is always good practice, but is there a reason you can't just use a Fusion Drive setup? It's fairly easy to do, you just need to create a bootable partition on another drive to boot from, at which point it's just a handful of terminal commands to create a core storage volume from your SSD and HDD, at which point you've got yourself a Fusion Drive.

I've done exactly that (plus some extra steps since I actually have an SSD + AppleRAID), but it completely eliminates the need for me to manage which files go where myself.

Granted Fusion Drive won't guarantee that all apps will launch at SSD speeds, but the ones I use most often have definitely seen the benefits.

 

[wonderspark]

wonderspark: I would love to see a picture of your storage setup hah also do you like FCPX more than the old Studio? I have been too stubborn to upgrade because when it first came out it looked like they wattered it down too much. Sorry thats really of topic
Also I think I got my system drive to a more manageable size.

I'll have to take some photos. Funny that I never have yet.

I don't like FCP X yet, because it does everything so much differently than any other NLE I've ever used. They say it's 'intuitive', but I think that is only if you've never used any NLE (besides iMovie) in your life. I never used iMovie, so for me, it's like someone switched my computer to display only Chinese. Maybe someday I'll sit down and take the time to learn it... when my main NLE doesn't work anymore, perhaps.

 

[UncleSchnitty]

Slimming down on your disk usage is always good practice, but is there a reason you can't just use a Fusion Drive setup? It's fairly easy to do, you just need to create a bootable partition on another drive to boot from, at which point it's just a handful of terminal commands to create a core storage volume from your SSD and HDD, at which point you've got yourself a Fusion Drive.

I actually never really bought into the fusion drive set up. Im not knocking it at all, it really seemed like a good idea when solid states were extremely expensive. I don't know it seems like it would be a really good idea for my secondary drive where it would speed up searching thru all those files. For my mail drive though I just think the standard SSD seems like the safer/quicker option. I mean realistically if I had triple the cash laying around I would go with OWC PCI SSD for full speed.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

 

[Macshroomer]

Kind of on topic but not:

Device backups such as iPhones and iPads can take up a fair bit of room, is there a way to assign the backup to one of my storage drives instead of the boot volume?

Just curious...

 

[UncleSchnitty]

YES, yes they can take up a lot of room. I would say just do a cloud backup. That may not be what you are looking for but its the best option. other than that you could back up locally, move the file from your library to a extra drive then if your device fails move it back. I dont think there is a way to assign it to back up to an external/extra drive. At least not easily

Kind of on topic but not:

Device backups such as iPhones and iPads can take up a fair bit of room, is there a way to assign the backup to one of my storage drives instead of the boot volume?

Just curious...

 

[Demigod Mac]

That can be helpful, but it won't show hidden files, and that is often where the problem is.

You probably don't want to mess with hidden files in most cases, and they aren't likely to be a source of a large amount of data.

If you do find a folder that seems bloated but can't pinpoint the source, you can always use a Terminal command to unhide them.

I've never had to do this, however... So I'm curious, are you using apps that create lots of large hidden files?

 

[scottsjack]

I don't know how you guys work with such small storage drives. I am getting ready to switch my 2010 MP Mavericks boot drive from a WD RE4 2TB to an SSD, Crucial or Samsung.

If I eliminate some of the stuff that is also located on the other internal hard drives I can reduce the boot drive's 1.1TB to about 700GB. I want to keep iTunes (250GB - lots of HDTracks music), Aperture libraries (maybe another 250GB), iPhoto (good for another 80GB) and a fairly big Adobe Camera Raw cache all on the boot drive.

With a little more cleanup I might get to 650GB!

 

[Weaselboy]

You probably don't want to mess with hidden files in most cases, and they aren't likely to be a source of a large amount of data.

If you do find a folder that seems bloated but can't pinpoint the source, you can always use a Terminal command to unhide them.

I've never had to do this, however... So I'm curious, are you using apps that create lots of large hidden files?

Probably the biggest culprit with this issue has been the Time Machine local backups file getting screwed up and not shrinking/deleting like it should, and that file is hidden. I just find a graphical interface like Omni Disksweeper or similar is an easier tool for a neophyte Mac user then having them poke around in Terminal.

To each his own.