clean up mac hard drive space using external hard drive

Photos are by far the biggest space hog on my Mac.įor the files you want to keep around but don’t need to have immediate access to, you should set up a storage system.Ī Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, desktop computer or even just a few spare external hard drives will work. For example, even though my working Lightroom catalogue is huge, I keep it on my Mac because I need to have access to it. You have three choices with each one: keep it, store it or delete it.įor any file you want to have on the Mac, the only choice is to just keep it where it is. Once you’ve identified the worst space hogs, it’s time to deal with them. If you want an app that will find and delete all the caches for you, it’s the one to use. It can scan your disk and identify various different forms of System Junk as well as big files. You can then drag any you want to get rid of to a collection bucket and delete them.Ĭlean My Mac costs $39.95, a lot more than Daisy Disk, but it also does a lot more. It uses an attractive graph to break down what files and folders are taking up the most space.

Daisy Disk shows what files and folders use the most space.ĭaisy Disk, which costs $9.99, takes a hands off approach to managing your SSD. To make sure you find everything, you need to use a specialised app like Daisy Disk or Clean My Mac. User caches, iOS updates, backups and temporary files can take up a huge amount of space. Not all big files are easy to find with the file system. On the other hand, a single Photoshop file can take up five or six gigabytes.īefore deleting anything you need to identify the space hogs that are worth removing. You can delete all the Word documents you like but you’re never going to free up more than a few hundred megabytes. Most of the files on any Mac don’t actually take up that much hard drive space.

Clean up mac hard drive space using external hard drive