Member Avatar for traceypsu

Im fairly new to mac computers and i have a power book g4 and it says that i have used approx. 57.27 gb of the 74 gb that are on there. I cant figure out how i used that much space and i tried getting rid of programs, pictures, videos, anything i could to get some space back..but nothing is working.Im not sure if i deleted things wrong ( i thought that i could just throw the program in the trash to delete them) Was that wrong? Do i now need to reformat my computer and how would i do it because im afraid of messing up my computer it i try to figure it out myself.

please please please help..someone

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by debbyisanana

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A compact, practical plan for the PowerBook G4 report (74 GB drive, ~57 GB in use).

Start by identifying the largest consumers of space and verifying a complete backup before any wipe. ’s advice to back up first is essential—prefer a full clone or an external copy that can be inspected or booted from so recovery is certain.

Quick ways to find big items: a visual disk mapper (as mentioned by ) makes spotting large folders immediate; a terminal summary is fast for drilling down:

du -sh ~/* 2>/dev/null
du -sk ~/* | sort -rn | head -n 20

The first shows human-readable sizes per top-level item in the home folder; the second sorts by kilobytes and lists the largest 20 entries. Repeat the same under /Users, /Volumes, and /Applications as needed.

A focused cleanup checklist (safe-first):

  • Ensure the Trash is emptied (deleted items don’t free space until then), and confirm backups before emptying any archive folders.
  • Remove large installers, .dmg files and downloads; check Photos/iPhoto and iTunes libraries for large media bundles.
  • Inspect ~/Library for Mail downloads, application caches, and old device backups (iPhone/iPad backups can be very large).
  • Look for virtual machine images or Disk Images and old archives; check external drives and mounted volumes.
  • If disk-image creation or cloning fails (as experienced), try a different external drive, different cable, or a dedicated cloning tool rather than a single Disk Utility attempt.

When wiping becomes necessary: confirm the backup by restoring a sample file or booting from the clone, have installer media or a bootable installer ready, and then use the system’s disk utility to erase and reinstall the OS. Deauthorize media accounts and note serials/keys before the wipe. Run a disk health check first and only proceed with a full reformat once backups are verified.

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Member Avatar for John A

Assuming you've got precious data on your Mac, I would say you should start by backing up the data. If it's a relatively small amount of data that you need to backup, you can simply burn it on a blank CD/DVD. Or if you have a network, you can back it up on another machine.

Now that you're ready to wipe everything, I would suggest the best thing to do is follow my guide to reinstalling Tiger. Make sure you choose the "Erase+Install" option when installing, and it will automatically reformat your hard drive.
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread54207.html

Hope this helps

Member Avatar for Danarchy

Im fairly new to mac computers and i have a power book g4 and it says that i have used approx. 57.27 gb of the 74 gb that are on there. I cant figure out how i used that much space and i tried getting rid of programs, pictures, videos, anything i could to get some space back..but nothing is working.Im not sure if i deleted things wrong ( i thought that i could just throw the program in the trash to delete them) Was that wrong? Do i now need to reformat my computer and how would i do it because im afraid of messing up my computer it i try to figure it out myself.

please please please help..someone

Just curious.
Which Mac operating system are you using?
I just wiped my eMac clean. Well, Apple did. But I had a hard time backing up my hard drive (3 times it didn't give acceptable results), so I had to drag everything to my external hard drive.
I didn't get a 'disk image' on the first try and got one on the second and third try, but they were too small to be a full copy.
I was using Disk Utility as suggested by a friend.

Good luck and welcome to Macs!
Dan

eMacs: 700Mhz and 1024Mhz, Gig RAM & OS X3.8 (waiting for Leopard after it has been on the market for a few months)

Member Avatar for Dani

After moving items to your trash, you have to empty the trash bin before the items will be deleted off of hte drive and space recovered.

Member Avatar for Lomoco

Try using Disk Inventory X. Download it from here: http://www.derlien.com/ . It shows a map of your hard-drive with colors for kinds of files. Check it out. You probably have some 1GB movies out there. Compress them with iMovie

Member Avatar for debbyisanana

just wanted to say thx, i have just relocated, have pc issues on top of it and couldnt find
the "code" per "wipe out" of my hard drive..

for no apparent reason i cant get my pc to find the tcp/ic, found the sql server stuff, however
it wont start either, so i guess its wipe out time,, its all good, been here done that, even tho
i hate to..

just couldnt find the paper i wrote how to do it on,, still packed possibly..
my hat goes off to all you folks who know all this stuff, i find it by trial and error.

thx again!

Debby

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