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#1 2009-10-26 12:13 am
- wpautz
- Member
- Registered: 2009-10-26
- Posts: 1
How to Tidy a Hard Drive ?
So I used to occasionally use WhatSize. I only have 100 gigs for an internal hard drive. And right now, not enough money in the bank to upgrade to a bigger one, or to connect to my external hard drives wirelessly (I intend to buy Time Capsule eventually).
Now that WhatSize costs 12$ I tried GrandPerspective and OmniDiskSweeper. OmnidiskSweeper worked fine, much like WhatSize.
What I'm wondering about is the other junk on my drive. Is there a piece of software, third party or within SnowLeopard, that can find useless junk and clean things up? For example one folder that was big is the Receipts folder. Mine is 600mb. I've read that I shouldn't mess with this file myself. But is there an app that can go through it for me?
What about junk left behind from deleted apps? Or any other such unused files.
thanks.
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#2 2009-10-26 12:41 am
- sturner
- Royal High Poobah
- Moderator

- From: Carrollton, TX USA
- Registered: 2000-01-31
- Posts: 13835
Re: How to Tidy a Hard Drive ?
Usually the left behind files are only a few kilobytes.
App Zapper will clean all those files from an installaiton, but it has to be there when you install the program.
The language files and printer files that you don't use take up the most space and those can be deleted.
I'm not dead yet.
There are 3 types of people, those who can count and those who can't.
"There are few things graven in stone, excepting your date of death."
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#3 2009-10-26 2:16 am
- SomeOneOrOther
- 3-yr-old switcher

- From: Ottawa, Ontario
- Registered: 2004-01-05
- Posts: 529
Re: How to Tidy a Hard Drive ?
Almost any app that you install and then trash (delete) will leave traces of itself in the following folders:
Home->Library->Application Support
Home->Library->Preferences
CAREFUL what you delete from these folders, as there are system files that you certainly don't want to trash.
While Spotlight won't search these folders, a tool such as Find Any File will look everywhere on your HD. And I tend to use this search tool when searching and deleting leftover files.
Last edited by SomeOneOrOther (2009-10-26 8:14 am)
MacBook, 13", early 2008.
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#4 2009-10-26 5:48 am
- Pariah
- James Carville Fan..

- From: Belly Of The Beast, Oklahoma!
- Registered: 2001-05-24
- Posts: 18426
Re: How to Tidy a Hard Drive ?
Zapping the resource forks on image files can save a considerable amount of space if you have lots of pics with icon previews.
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