Hi,
I keep getting warnings on my MacBookPro that my start up disk is almost full. I have checked "About my Mac" and it shows that over half the disk is full of "other" (see pic below).
Does anyone have any idea what "other" is, and how I get rid of it???

Thanks,

http://d.pr/Y1Uv

'other' is 'everything that doesn't fit into one of the above categories'.

Get something like omnidiskweeper or daisy disk, it will scan the disk ands show you exactly where all the 'other' stuff is and you can decide what to do about it.

OK I did work out that other would not fit into the other categories, that still gives no idea what it covers and why it is so large.

Is there a category for porn?

I was going to suggest What size or Grand Perspective as they show all files and how much space each takes.


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None of this has been helpful folks, a disappointing first for this forum which is usually so good.

I tried the Omnidisksweeper but it didn't show up any specific large file which was taking up the "other" space.

Its becoming an issue when I come to edit video as I keep getting a major slow down then the "start up disk almost full" message.

hmm... the video editing app you use doesn't have it's own trashcan by any chance does it?

Another thought is get Onyx and use it to run all the maintenance scripts - if there's a lot of stuff in caches or crash dumps, it should get rid of those.

Third thing - go to the finder, and in the 'file' menu select 'new smart folder'.
Make sure the search is set to 'this mac' then go to the window and click the '+' button. You'll see a new field appear that says 'kind'. Drop that field down and select '. IN the dialog that pops up select 'other'. Then in the window look for 'size' or 'file size' (depends which version of mac os you have). Tick the tick box next to it and click 'ok'. If you pick that, it will give you the option to search for files over a certain size. Set the size to something fairly large - say 10mb - and it will show you all the large files on your disk (at least that aren't in system only areas). That should give you some stuff to consider removing at least.

if you don't' see anything there and Onyx doesn't get some space back for you, then it's going to get complicated.

Jon

FCP by any chance?
I'll put money on scratch files.
I'll second Omnidisksweeper for a free app that'll show you what's using what space.

That would be my approach too.

No I don't have FCP. I use iMovie. There was a folder on my desktop which did contain some purchased movies so I moved that onto an external disk to free up some space. This did seem to reduce the size of the "other" category. Not sure why as I assumed it would reduce the size of the "movie" category.

Maybe this is just a new feature with Lion!!

You could always use Finder and make sure that file sizes are shown. Then sort by folder size.

Maybe the "movie" category only pertains to items that are in iTunes?
I'm only guessing as I'm still on 10.6.

Mark

Could be hidden cache files, which a restart should clear.

I found out that my machine ground to a halt because of web processes filling up the memory. By using activity monitor to kill the processes that were simply expanding.

just a thought
if using safari check the safari cache and the safari top sites cache and icon cache
on my imac the top sites cache had used over 4GB

one reason that i stopped using safari ...