macbook hard drive strange warning

ToqueToque Member Posts: 1,188
in Working with GS (Mac)

Ive been getting a warning when trying to save something.... "Your hard drive is full" warning periodically. Oddly when I check "About this mac, storage" It says I have 17 GB free??

I cleaned out some things to give a bit of extra space... But today the same warning popped up.

Hints of a failing hard drive?

Comments

  • PhilipCCPhilipCC Encounter Bay, South AustraliaMember Posts: 1,390

    @Toque You need to clean up more stuff or shift it off to an external drive. A hard drive should have at least 10% of the total drive space free otherwise it slows down and struggles a bit, e.g. 1Terabyte drive: keep 100 Gb free. Also it's good to have a utility like Tech Tool Pro to defragment the space on the drive that is free and make into one contiguous block. Just Google " optimising a hard disk drive" and you'll find plenty of tips.

  • IceboxIcebox Member Posts: 1,485

    Download OmniDiskSweeper and delete all the files that are not necessary , thats what i did , its a nice app and will find hidden files that are taking up all your space.

  • ToqueToque Member Posts: 1,188

    I may have to clean house. Thanks

  • PhilipCCPhilipCC Encounter Bay, South AustraliaMember Posts: 1,390

    @Toque May I ask what Model Mac you have and what are its specs?

  • ToqueToque Member Posts: 1,188

    @PhilipCC said:
    @Toque May I ask what Model Mac you have and what are its specs?

    Sure.

    Mid 2012 MacBook 120 GB. 4 megs ram.

    Looking at it the suggestions are correct. With OS and basics there really isn't much space left. I back up on external.

    New MacBook 1200$ Canadian.

    New larger SSD 230$.

    Looking tonight for buying and to swap out SSD for 250GB. Easy to do but not sure how to clone old SSD to new......... will reasearch later.

    Thanks for comments.

  • ToqueToque Member Posts: 1,188

    Ordered a larger 250 GB Transcend SSD. And also a 128 GB SD drive.

  • ToqueToque Member Posts: 1,188

    Just installed a new Transcend 250 GB SSD and 128 GB Sd drive. Pretty easy to do and actually speeds thing up a bit too. If anyone is following this or finds it in a search.

    Easy and cheaper than a new macbook.

  • PhilipCCPhilipCC Encounter Bay, South AustraliaMember Posts: 1,390

    Glad to hear it worked out well for such a small outlay.

  • mhedgesmhedges Raised on VCS Member Posts: 634
    edited November 2016

    @Toque,

    How did you clone the drive? I have an itch to change the HD in my Mac Mini.

    My Blog / App Store / Google Play

  • ToqueToque Member Posts: 1,188

    The instructions included with the drive didn't actually work. (It comes with tools instructions and external case, USB cable).

    My HD was encrypted but after I unencrypted it still wouldn't clone.

    I simply hooked up the new drive by USB. Cloned with SuperDuper. Then installed the new SSD, plugged in old SSD by USB let it boot up from there. Changed setting to boot from new SSD. Thats it.

    I would recommend Transcend. No problems after a couple days.......

    youtube has videos to guide you through as well...... I assume mac mini would be similar.

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