after 3 years operating an iMac G3 with a 30gb HDD and never filling it up, i've somehow maxed out the 250gb hdd on my iMac G5 (well, have just under 5gb spare).

what do ppl generally do when this happens?

do you start pouring through your documents folders, purging files you no longer need?
do you burn files that you rarely access to DVD and then delete them?
upgrade your internal hdd to a larger size? (can you get larger hdds for the G5 iMacs? and if so, how would you go about copying all your data?)
do you laboriously trudge through both your iTunes and iPhoto libraries, mercilessly trashing stuff of 'poor' quality?
do you bite the bullet and buy additional storage? (but surely that's a never ending saga ... what do you do when you fill that up??)
all of the above??

what have you done when you've chocked up your internal hdd??

i have just done the same thing
filled up my 250gb imac hd

buying a 500gb lacie drive to store all my music and movies on

nice

i already have a 300gb external hdd, but i use this for backup!

i'm not into storing movies on the hdd ... yet. maybe when i get an Apple TV, hmmm.

Not a huge fix but I can recommend an app called monolingual

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

It gives you the opportunity to delete instructions/manuals in OSX which are in languages you are likely never use (eg Swahili or Kazakstani).

Saved me about 5GB of HDD space.

is it really a problem having multiple external hdd?

hubs arent that expensive if you are running out of ports

yes, hubs are cheap. but it's the additional hdds that aren't.

thanks, vwl. i'll give that whirl. i'm sure there are programs out there, too, that you could run to identify (safe) files that haven't used for sometime which may be candidates for storage/deletion ... ?

monolingual saved me a grand total of 1.8Mb. If i'm short of space, i go through and ruthlessly clean out my iTunes and iPhoto libraries. I also convert spoken podcasts to 32kbps

The shareware utility XSlimmer is a step up from Monolingual; it also strips out Intel code for a PPC Mac (and vice versa). I've found some of the biggest savings in MB here.

JB

Monolingual also strips out intel/ppc code now =)

Trwaling through the library folders with "calculate folder sizes" switeched on can be very interesting". All those stupid garage band files that I didnt know I had...

I regularly use What Size, which provides folder/file size, from which you can sort, review, delete etc.

You could also try Tidy Up, which finds duplicate files. Have only tried the demo version myself, but it seemed to work pretty well.

Yeah use "WhatSize" to find what is taking up all the space

Delete Garage band files if you don't use it

And theres some program you can use to delete printer drivers from brands you never print from but its name escapes me at the moment

Edit: Great minds...

I usually make CD/DVD of what i have added .. each month or six months and chuck them in the cupboard .. I rarely ever get them back out again so don't worry about all the crap you have on HD The only important things are your system and your necessary user files.
It is wise to buy extra storage if you are downloading music and video files. But once again .. what do you need to keep them all on the computer for?
Removable media is the answer.

what my cousin found, was that he had multiples of most things he downloaded. ie a compressed file or multiple .rar files from a download then the extracted content this could be an image ie .iso. then the installed item or movie. this is on a pc though. i dont think ppl are as stupid as him



added: i hate working with cd's or dvd's personally, they allways end up under some books or crap

isn't the issue with removeable media that it fades over time?

thanks for the tips so far guys ... i'll have a busy weekend ahead of me