Then, I duplicate (or triplicate) its contents to another disk or cloud storage. So, I shop for the least expensive drive that serves my needs. I believe all drives will fail eventually and plan for that with a redundant backup system. Some people (not me) agonize over MTBF (mean time between failure) statistics before buying. How I Shop for Storageįinally, look for a backup disk at least 2X the size of your startup disk (and preferably larger). Once again, an external SSD will be faster and more responsive than a hard disk at a higher cost per gigabyte. Relocate Media to an External Driveĭon’t forget that if your Music, Movies, or Pictures folders are part of the problem, it’s easy to move their contents to an external drive via the Preferences windows of the Music, iTunes, Movies, or Photos apps. Then, click an item (or Command+click to select multiple items), and click Delete to remove them permanently. Or, click one of the file types below Recommendations in the sidebar (namely Applications, Messages, Music, Photos, and such) to see your files of that type sorted by size. The Manage screen offers myriad options for managing (and eliminating) large files. On the Manage screen, choose Recommendations in the sidebar to see a quartet of options for managing your files.
#OPTIMIZE MY MAC FUSION DRIVE MAC#
The easiest (and least expensive) way is to choose About This Mac from the Apple menu, click the Storage tab, and then click the Manage button.
So, the first thing to do is determine which files or folders in your Home directory are using the most disk space. And, the closer it gets to 100%, the more likely you’ll soon encounter big trouble. When there is 10% or less space available, you’re likely to start experiencing slowdowns or worse. To see if your startup disk is nearly full, select its icon in the Finder and choose File–>Get Info. Instead, purchase an external drive-preferably a solid-state USB 3 drive-and use that as your boot disk. Desktop Mac users can save a bit of cash by not replacing the dead internal drive at all.