more mac help needed

back alley

back alley

IMAGES
Local time
5:20 PM
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
41,288
Location
true north strong & free
View My Gallery
i have a macbook with 160 gig hard drive.
it's full.

i have 2 external backups with one housing just my photos and music.

i need to clear some space on the macbook and want to empty the 'pictures' folder. it wont let me delete the folder saying it is required.

is there a quick and easy way to empty the folder while still leaving the folder intact?

i plan to empty the music as well as soon as i finish ripping all my cds and putting them on my ipod.
 
If you select "secure empty trash" it is overwriting the files instead of just deleting the directory links.

Otherwise, your HD is full and the OS is struggling to do it's internal bookkeeping because the HD head has to search all over the place to find empty space (for the bookkeeping).

WIth UNIX (the guts of OSX) is risky to let the OS HD get really full. I would reboot after everything is settled. Rebooting may be entirely superstitious, but UNIX will defragment your HD, so I like to reboot after a large deletion in case the defragmenting works better as UNIX wakes up after a boot. It sounds like you'll be OK after the deletion, but occasionally terrible things happen when the HD is actually full. So.. don't do that again.
 
back alley said:
well, this is all beyond me...as long as it keeps on ticking i'll be a happy camper.

what amazes me is that this thing has been emptying the trash since last night and it's only half done now...
Click to expand...

Joe - if you back up your HDD with Time Machine you're fine even if your macbook's HDD fails (and it will fail eventually)...you'll just have to replace the HDD and use Time Machine to bring you back to where your machine was at the last backup.

However if you don't have a backup system like Time Machine then you should pre-empt a failure by replacing the HDD otherwise it's just a matter of time before you lose EVERYTHING on your macbooks HDD.
 
monochromejrnl said:
Joe - if you back up your HDD with Time Machine you're fine even if your macbook's HDD fails (and it will fail eventually)...you'll just have to replace the HDD and use Time Machine to bring you back to where your machine was at the last backup.

However if you don't have a backup system like Time Machine then you should pre-empt a failure by replacing the HDD otherwise it's just a matter of time before you lose EVERYTHING on your macbooks HDD.
Click to expand...

i use 2 external drives. one is hooked to the mac and does regular back ups on the whole system.
the other is a usb drive and i use it for just my photos and my music.
 
You guys must have a lot to throw away! I regularly keep the trash empty so it doesn't fill up my hard drive space. Back Alley, have you never emptied your trash before? If so that's probably why it's taking so long. Getting rid of gigs of info.
 
Atom said:
You guys must have a lot to throw away! I regularly keep the trash empty so it doesn't fill up my hard drive space. Back Alley, have you never emptied your trash before? If so that's probably why it's taking so long. Getting rid of gigs of info.
Click to expand...

i emptied it once before and it took as long...i wondered then if it was normal.
it said it was emptying 37 thousand (+) items...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Rob-F
I Can't get photos to load into Apple Aperture on my two "newer" computers
2
Replies
27
Views
2K
Godfrey
Godfrey
Rayt
Lightroom DNG files extraction help!
Replies
5
Views
1K
Rayt
Rayt
robertofollia
Kodak Stuttgart factory pics
Replies
0
Views
328
robertofollia
robertofollia
A
2020 - 2021: Pandemic, Lockdowns and More
4 5 6
Replies
103
Views
5K
Michalm
Michalm
sooner
Help Needed with Fujica Super Six
Replies
3
Views
1K
Scott --
S
Back
Top Bottom