Concerned About Disk Space

bowjest

Registered
Hello to all,

I'm a brand new Mac user (just bought a MacBook Pro, Intel, 2.4GH, 2GB RAM, and a 200GB drive).

Knowing that 200GB of drive translates into about 186GB in real terms, I'm slightly concerned that having run setup and installed Firefox it says I have about 167GB left.

I read a posting here that states that the iLife programs take up about 10+GB, but that should leave me with about 176GB +/-, not 167GB.

Can anyone help shed any light on this? I hope it's not too much of a newbie question.

Thanks,

Bowjest
 
Mac OS X 10.5.5 takes quite a bit of space too.

By default the system comes with about 20 languages installed in it. Removing all of the ones you'll never use (Norwegian, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Korean etc etc etc) will save you quite a bit of space.
So e.g. Delocalizer will save you a lot of that space back.
 
Giaguara,

Thanks for the additional information. I'll look into that.

But on the whole, do the numbers quoted sound right?

186GB Disk

Leopard 10.5.4 installed, then ran initial account setup + installed Firefox

Now, 167GB left

Just seems like a lot of space that I can't account for.

Thanks,

Bowjest
 
Nah, that's alright. Like Giaguara said: The system takes quite some space as well. Leopard comes on an almost 7 GB disk that gets _unpacked_ to roughly 10 GB on your harddrive. (186 -> 176.) Then you have iLife, which you say takes 10 GB. (-> 166.) Then the system also uses some harddrive space for virtual memory, let's say 2-5 GB. (-> 161.) So if your system still has more space than that, you're certainly just fine.
 
Thanks, Fryke,

That makes me feel a lot better.

Mind you, I'll have to change my previous anti-Windows/anti-Vista mantra: "No operating system should be that large!"

:)

Bowjest
 
Well - and you can remove the unneeded languages too. Why keep em if you don't speak any of them or don't plan to use them? (Just leave English + if any second then that..)
There is a similar program or a different version of it that also allows you to remove the unneeded processor code. So when you have an Intel Mac, you don't need PPC code and vice versa.

Sometimes the localization + processor code take quite a bit of space.

So for instance in 10.5.3 TextEdit application was 22.1 MB. When I removed the localization + PPC code it shrunk to 2 MB. (Snow Leopard aka 10.6 is marketed of being so much leaner when it's out next year, but so far the developer builds only contain Intel code and English localization so no difference to 10.5 similarly slimmed version) [more on]
 
Hello to all,

Knowing that 200GB of drive translates into about 186GB in real terms, I'm slightly concerned that having run setup and installed Firefox it says I have about 167GB left.

Both are real values, but they are used incorrectly (at least when using the notation GB or gb).

200gbb = what was reported as size for the drive in the old times using text based enviroments.

186gb = what is rreported when using the advanced software for formatting / partitioning the drive.

The difference is 1024*1024*1024 = 1.073.741.824 <> 1.000.000.000.


If you ant to know how the drive space is taken up, you can use the terminal command DU to find out.


Good luck, Kees
 
Here is an idea--get an external HD with about twice your laptop's HD capacity. Give it a partition about the size of your internal HD. This you will mirror to back up your system should your internal ever die.

The other you can use to store "stuff" you are not using--all of those movies, tunes you do not lan to listen to, et cetera.

--J.D.
 
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