Sweep your Mac clean
Mac Tip #364, 12 November 2008
When I did a sweep of my MacBook Pro recently I recovered 10 gigabytes of space lost to some unexpected hidden files.
Because the files were hidden — their names began with a dot — of course I had no idea they were there. I was just mystified that free space on my hard drive seemed to have disappeared.
How I found the wasteful files
I run OmniDiskSweeper over my hard drive.
The list of files - left
I quickly saw that Users > Miraz claimed around 60 Gb of space. Then I clicked on Music > iTunes > Podcasts.
The list of files - middle
Then I spotted it: the .indelible-info folder that contained a bunch of items inside a folder called deleted. I could see podcast episodes dating back many months, all of which I thought I’d removed from my computer.
When I first examined my hard drive a few weeks ago I found a lot of these .indelible-info folders. By removing most of them I reclaimed nearly 10% of the space.
The list of files - right
Try a sweep of your Mac and see what it turns up.
If you found this Tip useful you definitely need my ebooks Sizzling Safari Tips for Mac Users & 22 Tempting Timesavers for Mac Users. And remember to subscribe for regular Tips.
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kaylee
Miraz, as far as I can tell that .indelible-info folder is a result of unclean shutdowns… can’t find any on my machine. Worth knowing about that app, but hopefully (!) that won’t be a common problem.
Thanks for that elucidation Andy.
I have had problems with this machine crashing, so wouldn’t be surprised to find there are stray files.
I plan to wipe this machine over the summer holiday and start fresh.
Cheers,
Miraz
This application will also delete a lot of pre-installed drivers that come with mac OS X.
Thanks John. That’s good to know. I presume you mean it will allow you to find them so you can choose to delete them?
RE: OmniDiskSweeper
Miraz, thank you for the tip on OmniDiskSweeper.
I’ve been puzzling over my Incredible Shrinking Hard Drive for awhile now, and this utility very quickly highlighted the culprit: OSX Planet, a defunct desktop picture utility, had been saving a screen capture every 10 minutes — since 2008 — all day every day, into a folder in User/Library/Application Support.
Each file was less than 1.5 MB, but there were over 46,000 files I couldn’t easily find otherwise, and I regained more than 57 GB of a 120 GB drive.
Wow!
Wow. That’s an amazing find, Dennis! I’m so glad the Tip was helpful.
It also goes to show how small savings (or files) can add up over time to something very significant.
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