Cleaning Your Startup Disk on Mac
Sooner or later, every user faces the need to clean up the internal and external drives of the laptop, and the startup disk is one of them. This article will help you understand the issue.
What to Do When Your Startup Disk is Full?
Even the fastest and most powerful computers are littered with unnecessary files over time. The Apple’s computers are no exception. A large amount of debris on the hard disk can take up a lot of free space, and also affect the speed and stability of the computer.
If you want to make your “baby” fly just as it was when you bought it, then just look at the network. There you can find apps for all occasions: cleaning up the Mac from garbage, “anti-theft” systems, utilities for backing up, optimizing, etc. It is always possible to quickly find and delete all these unnecessary files that slow down the Mac OS. Click here to find it out.
No matter how stable OS X is, the episodic cleaning of this system from all sorts of garbage is still needed. Experienced users can do this manually. These special utilities will help those who do not have enough knowledge or time.
How to Free up Space on a Startup Disk on a Mac
To clean a disk on a Mac, use different methods or combine them.
Method 1
You can, of course, and often even need to use some software complex, which automatically removes all the “garbage” from the system. Here is an article with some apps to remove unwanted files from your Mac. If you do not want to download third-party software, you can use the standard tools of the Mac.
Method 2
In complex cases, run the perfect DaisyDisk program. And do not pay attention that the program is paid since its free functionality is more than enough. In the initial window, you will see all the disks, both system, and all the flash drives and images connected to the Mac. We need exactly the disk near which the “startup disk” is written, although you can also scan an external one. You need to click on the scan button and wait for the end of the process: depending on the type of disk and volume, the program will scan it from several seconds to several minutes. And after the scan, a window with a diagram will appear. The diagram will be individual for each user. This will display all the large objects – folders and files on the selected drive. Note that not everything should be touched, and something will not even be available. You can see the System and Libraries folders – there are extremely necessary ones and never even touch them without having a backup copy. They contain the most important files for the adequate operation of OS X! Only professionals who clearly understand what is there and for what it is responsible can clean these folders.
Method 3
Identify large files. The biggest “eaters” of the place are files and folders that users forgot about, or who “grew up” without their knowledge, like a folder with backup copies of the iPhone and iPad. Many will agree that working on a clogged computer is a real hell. But using specialized utilities, you again remember those times when your MacBook was completely new and clean in all respects. Use special utilities, for example, Clean My Mac. In this application, there is a separate function to search for large files, with which you can scan your entire disk and identify the largest ones.
All of the above methods are simple methods and effective steps to get rid of junk. Feel free to use our pieces of advice in order not to turn your laptop into a garbage dump.