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Sweep your Mac clean

Wed 12 November 2008

A recent sweep of my MacBook Pro recovered 10 gigabytes of space lost to some unexpected hidden files. Find out how to sweep your Mac.

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.

I run OmniDiskSweeper over my hard drive.

I downloaded a small piece of software called OmniDiskSweeper and set it to run. OmniDiskSweeper is free, but US$15 activates a handy Delete button that can save you some time later. [Update: in 2009 the full version was released free.]

The list of files - left

The list of files - left

It took a while, but after several minutes OmniDiskSweeper produced a listing of all files and folders on my Mac, with sizes beside each.

I quickly saw that Users > Miraz claimed around 60 Gb of space. Then I clicked on Music > iTunes > Podcasts.

The list of files - middle

The list of files - middle

I saw that the Rocketboom podcast was using around 840Mb of space — odd since I’d deleted all the episodes I’d watched and there were none waiting for me.

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

The list of files - right

Warning: don’t delete files unless you know for sure what they are. The Operating System hides some files for good reason — delete the wrong files and you can severely mess up your computer.

Try a sweep of your Mac and see what it turns up.

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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1 kaylee Wed 26 November 2008 at 16:26:35

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

kaylee

Reply

2 Andy Piper Sat 29 November 2008 at 11:33:03

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.

Reply

3 Miraz Jordan Sat 29 November 2008 at 17:05:14

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

Reply

4 John Ohrmundt Mon 05 October 2009 at 17:57:46

This application will also delete a lot of pre-installed drivers that come with mac OS X.

Reply

5 Miraz Jordan Mon 05 October 2009 at 18:00:30

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?

Reply

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