Preparing Your Hard Disk For Mac
Oct 06, 2016 Preparing your backup disk in macOS El Capitan and Sierra. How To Transfer iPhone Photos To External Hard Drive Using Image. Tinker Forward 11,423 views. Mac El Capitan Disk Utility. How to Change a Computer Hard Drive Disk. This guide will take you on a step by step process to replace an internal hard drive in a computer desktop. Change a Hard Drive in a Mac Notebook. Recover Data from the Hard Drive of a Dead Laptop. Check Your Hard Disk Space. Destroy a Hard Drive.
When I first wrote about, high-capacity SSDs were just beginning to become affordable. Replacing a Mac’s 500GB or 1TB hard drive with a same-sized SSD required at least $250 back then, but the benefits were tremendous: even an aging machine became markedly (5x) faster, silent, and — unexpectedly — more fun to use. All for much less than the price of a new Mac. Today, high-capacity SSDs are more affordable than ever. Replacing your old 500GB hard drive with a same-sized SSD from a reputable manufacturer, while, each $100 less than only a couple of years ago. Once unthinkably huge and are now commonly available, too, albeit at eye-watering prices. With this week’s, Apple has officially made SSDs its preferred Mac storage solution, introducing the new APFS standard to further optimize SSD performance over Fusion and traditional hard drives.
So this is a perfect time to revisit the topic of SSD upgrades; if you held out before, now’s the time to jump in! The Big Picture For nearly a decade, SSDs have been acknowledged as the “future” of Mac storage. Even without changing a Mac’s CPU, GPU, or RAM, replacing the hard drive with an internal SSD instantly leads to much faster macOS performance, app loading, restarting, and file accessing.
A Mac that once took over a minute to boot can now start working in seconds; Macs built with SSDs can awaken from sleep instantly. Despite superior performance, high prices led Apple to slowly stagger solid state drive adoption across individual Mac product lines. The January 2008-vintage original MacBook Air was the first Mac with the option of a 64GB SSD (for a $1,300 premium over the laptop’s base price), and 1TB SSDs were going for roughly $4,000 — Apple didn’t even try to sell 1TB SSDs at that point. Nine years later, dramatically faster and smaller SSDs with the same capacities can be had for less than a tenth of those prices, so every current Mac either has an SSD by default or as an option. Running cooler, quieter, and with superior energy efficiency than traditional hard drives, SSDs have fewer failures, and reputable manufacturers tend to warranty them for longer than their predecessors.
For instance, generally have 5-year warranties, and if you’re willing to pay more, its have 10-year warranties, eclipsing all but the most expensive enterprise-class desktop hard disks. Not all SSDs are equivalent in reliability and performance, but ones from top-tier chip companies are pretty incredible. Which Mac Models Can Be Internally Upgraded? Good news first: most older Macs and even some current Macs can be easily user-upgraded to include SSDs. With limited expertise and only three tools, I was able to swap out my 2011 iMac’s old hard drive for an SSD in roughly 30 minutes. Alternately, if your Mac has a SuperDrive, you may be able to replace that optical CD/DVD drive with the SSD, though it’s important to note that the SSD mightn’t run as fast due to slower Mac internal connections to the SuperDrive. Hard drive replacement is generally the best option.
Bad news: the newer the Mac, the greater the likelihood that actually installing the drive yourself will be tricky. Apple continues to shrink its desktop and laptop machines, more tightly integrating the few remaining components inside, so you’ll want to follow an to safely open and close your machine. Owners of the very latest MacBook and MacBook Pro models shouldn’t bother going further; these laptops have hardwired SSDs that can’t be replaced, a trend that Apple may expand to future desktop Macs. If your Mac is one of the following models, it can probably be upgraded with an SSD. IMac: Up through 2017 (current) models Mac mini: Up through late 2014 (current) models. Mac Pro: Up through late 2013 (current) models MacBook: Up through mid-2010 models MacBook Air: Up through 2017 (current) models MacBook Pro: Up through mid-2015 models For Non-Upgradable Macs, Consider External SSDs Ideally, you’ll install the SSD inside your Mac, squeezing maximum performance out of its chips without needing to power an external device. But if your Mac can’t be internally upgraded, or you’re squeamish about opening up your computer, you can buy an external SSD and connect it to a USB 3 or Thunderbolt port.
You’ll see definite speed improvements for whatever files and apps you place on the SSD, though overall macOS performance won’t change unless you’re booting from the SSD itself. Preparing Your Mac for an SSD Before any hard disk to SSD swap, my advice is to run a complete Time Machine backup to an external drive — preferably one that’s connected with a cable rather than Wi-Fi — so all of your old hard drive’s contents will be ready to transfer over to the new SSD. I strongly recommend updating your Mac to the latest non-beta version of macOS it can run before beginning the backup process.
Mac Hard Disk Recovery
Once you’ve swapped the drives, hold Command (⌘) and R down on the keyboard when first restarting your SSD-equipped Mac. This will enable you to use Disk Utility to format the SSD. If your Mac can run macOS High Sierra or later, choose APFS formatting for the SSD; otherwise, choose Mac Extended + Journaled formatting. Then restore directly from your Time Machine backup. The restoring process will take hours, but you’ll come back to a fresh macOS install with everything pretty much as it was left on your old drive.
Alternately, you can install a new copy of macOS on the drive, then install only the apps and files you want. Achieve this after a Command-R boot by choosing Reinstall macOS from the macOS Utilities list, and selecting the new SSD as the destination for macOS. This will give you a completely fresh start, though your emails, app settings, and other files will need to be separately hunted down and brought over from your other hard drive. For users with plans to swap an optical drive for an SSD, keeping the SSD as a non-boot drive, nothing needs to be done to prep software beforehand.
Backing up your Mac is always a good idea before opening it up, but all you’ll need to do after the SSD installation is run Disk Utility and format the new drive, then transfer files over as you see fit. However, if you plan to make the SSD your boot drive, follow the instructions above so you can enjoy the speed benefits of running macOS directly from the SSD.
Once you’ve set up the SSD with macOS and your files, choose the SSD as your boot disk from the Choose Startup Disk utility, found in System Preferences (Startup Disk) or the macOS Utilities suite. One brief note on TRIM, a topic that was a bigger deal when I originally wrote SSD guides;. In short, TRIM — automatic recycling of SSD space freed up by deleting files — is a background task performed by your Mac. It’s handled in the background by OS X, though for reasons unknown, Apple officially guarantees TRIM support only for its own drives. Under macOS High Sierra, the Samsung EVO drives I recommend here shouldn’t have any problems working perfectly with your Mac, but if you need a tool for another drive, is an option. IMac: Internal + External SSD Options I’ll leave the specific iMac opening instructions to the, but it suffices to say that the iMac isn’t super difficult to upgrade – iFixit suggests less than an hour of total install time, and I personally took around half an hour in total. Before you begin, you’ll need several components: the SSD, a mounting bracket, an in-line digital thermal sensor, and a small collection of tools.
For the SSD, I recommend, and to secure the drive inside your iMac. Other World Computing/OWC now sells the, a better deal than choosing and buying the parts separately. OWC’s walk you through installation, too. Owners of SuperDrive-equipped iMacs also have the option of swapping the optical drive for an SSD. Has model-specific SuperDrive replacement guides for the 21.5-inch iMac (, and ), 27-inch iMac (, and ), and that are about as far back as you should consider for possible SSD swaps. The guides omit only one step: placing the small SSD you buy within an adapter/caddy as large as the optical drive you’re replacing. Some people skip the adapter and use pieces of double-sided tape to hold their SSDs in place, but if you’d like to use a mount to keep your SSD firmly within the old optical drive bay, this is inexpensive and praised for its fit in 27-inch iMacs.
Alternately, this is designed to fit a variety of 2009-2011 iMacs. If you prefer to go with an external drive, I would recommend if you need a Thunderbolt interface, otherwise a much smaller and less expensive. Which will be forward-compatible with USB-C computers.
Preparing Your Hard Disk For Mac Pro
Mac mini: Internal + External SSD Options. Courtesy iFixit Internal SSD replacement for the 2010 to 2014 “unibody” Mac mini requires considerably more effort and skill than the iMac. Correctly describe many upgrades to unibody (metal-topped) Mac minis as being “difficult.” This is the, for which you’ll need a, a, and a special, plus hours of disassembly and reassembly time. You’ll need to the Mac mini’s chassis, fan, and antenna plate before disconnecting the logic board and hard drive — which steps become even more challenging on the. I would recommend that you seek professional assistance for an internal drive upgrade of this model, and seek out Transcend’s upcoming, which promises 2014 Mac mini compatibility in 240GB ($230), 480GB ($400), and 960GB ($670) capacities.
Thankfully, are easier to open, requiring only a,. You can replace the hard drive, or instead remove the Mac’s SuperDrive optical drive, swapping the SSD in while preserving the original hard disk. This is designed to fit 2009-2010 Mac minis.
The same sort of 2.5-inch internal and external drives can be used in the older Mac minis as on the iMac. While the 2010 Mac mini limits you to FireWire 800 or USB 2.0 — probably not worth the effort of adding an external SSD, for speed reasons — the 2011 model has a Thunderbolt port, and the 2012 version has USB 3.0 ports, making external SSDs more beneficial.
The is a great choice if you have USB 3.0 ports; is a great pick for Thunderbolt. Mac Pro: Internal + External SSD Options Current-generation (late-2013 design) Mac Pros ship with large, fast SSDs, making SSD swaps less critical.
Regardless, Transcend will soon release the Mac Pro-compatible, which promises up to, and will be available in 240GB/$230, 480GB/$400, and 960GB/$670 capacities. First-generation Mac Pros can definitely benefit from an SSD’s speed increase., the process of installing a first-generation Mac Pro hard drive is as simple as flipping a rear latch, pulling the Mac’s side panel and hard drive bay out, then using a Philips head screw driver to attach a hard drive sled to your new drive. But with an SSD, there’s another step: use the, which holds the tiny SSD within a custom-fit replacement for the Mac Pro’s hard drive bay. The old Mac Pro’s physical size and multi-drive-ready internal architecture make it an ideal candidate for an internal SSD. But if you’re considering an external drive, you might want to think again; the aged model’s outdated USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 ports aren’t going to cut it. Old MacBook/MacBook Pro: Internal + External SSD Options. Courtesy iFixit Aluminum-bodied 13-inch MacBooks of 2010 or earlier vintage (not current 12-inch models) and MacBook Pros sold in 2015 or earlier can be upgraded with 2.5-inch internal SSDs. If you’re going to do an internal hard drive swap, the I previously recommended offers a superb combination of speed, reliability, and quality for the price. As shown in these iFixit guides (MacBook Pro 13-inch / / /, and ), the hard drive swap process requires a T6 screwdriver, one Philips #00 screwdriver, and a flat-head screwdriver (or spudger).
You just unscrew and remove the bottom cover of your MacBook, pull out the hard drive, replace it with the SSD, then reattach the bottom cover. It’s even easier for, which has a pop-off bottom panel without screws for easier hard drive replacement. If your MacBook has a SuperDrive, swapping it for an SSD is quite easy. iFixit publishes separate guides for the, non-Retina MacBook Pro 13-inch (, and ), the non-Retina, and, all of which involve one screwdriver, opening the bottom compartment, and disconnecting some connectors before reassembling the machine.
To hold the new SSD in place within the former optical drive bay, this works with the metal 13-inch MacBook and pre-Retina, pre-2012 13-/15-/17-inch MacBook Pros. External options depend upon the ports your MacBook/Pro has, but again, you’re best off with the if you have a free USB port, while will likely give you better speeds if you have Thunderbolt. Retina MacBook Pro: Replacing Your SSD There aren’t as many generations of the Retina MacBook Pro as there are for the MacBook Air, so the choice between SSDs is simpler. First-generation 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros (sold mid-2012 to early-2013) can use (, ), or OWC’s (, ). Both come with the tools you’ll need to do the SSD swap, plus external enclosures. Expect 460-570MB/second speeds from these drives. First-generation 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros (sold late-2012 to early-2013) can use (, ), or OWC’s (, ).
Both come with the tools you’ll need to do the SSD swap, plus external enclosures. Expect 460-570MB/second speeds from these drives. Late-2013 to mid-2015 13-inch and 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros use newer SSDs with faster PCIe 3.0 connectors. Transcend’s soon-to-be-released promises up to, and 240GB/$230, 480GB/$400, and 960GB/$670 capacities. For the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, SSD replacement is virtually identical to the newer MacBook Airs: dead simple, with 10 undercarriage screws, a battery connector, and one interior screw to remove.
As noted above, the Transcend and OWC kits come with the screwdrivers you’ll need, as well as external drive housings to help you migrate your files. The original 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro requires quite a few additional steps; Apple significantly simplified the SSD replacement process for subsequent-generation 13-inch machines, bringing them to parity with the 15-inch model and MacBook Airs. MacBook Air: Replacing Your Old Hard Drive or SSD There are five key generations of the MacBook Air that use different types of solid state drives. First-generation 13-inch MacBook Airs (sold between 2008 and mid-2009) can be upgraded to a 1.8-inch SSD with a ZIF connector. On price, your best choice is a.
Expect speeds in the 50-90MB/second range. Second-generation 13-inch MacBook Airs (sold between 2008 and mid-2009) can be upgraded to a 1.8-inch SATA drive with between 120GB to 480GB of capacity. Other World Computing/OWC’s Mercury Aura Pro comes in or versions with promised read/write speeds in the 275-285MB range.
Third-generation MacBook Airs (11-inch and 13-inch, sold between late 2010 and mid-2011) use blade-style SATA III SSDs that look similar to RAM boards. The now sells for, with a, and a. They promise 460-570MB/second speeds. OWC’s Aura/Aura Pro series for this particular MacBook Air has had weaker reviews, but a for the same computer can be had for. IFixit’s guides for this and are here. Fourth-generation MacBook Airs (11-inch and 13-inch, sold starting mid-2012) should go with the models (, ), which promise 460-570MB/second speeds. iFixit’s guides for this and are here.
Fifth-generation MacBook Airs (11-inch and 13-inch sold starting early 2013) switched to faster PCIe SSDs. Transcend’s soon-to-be-released is compatible with these and current MacBook Air models, promising up to, and 240GB/$230, 480GB/$400, and 960GB/$670 capacities. How easy is installation?
Except for the older first- and second-generation MacBook Airs, the process is incredibly simple: you generally use a Pentalobe screwdriver to remove 10 screws from the Air’s bottom, then a Torx T5 screwdriver to unscrew one screw on the SSD, gently removing the old SSD, and then repeating the steps in the opposite direction to replace the screws. Includes both screwdrivers. Alternately, may be overkill for this particular situation, but it includes all the wacky screwdriver pieces you’ll need for other Apple projects.
The directions are: you instead need only a, but will have to pull 10 external screws, 13 internal screws, the full battery, and multiple cables before reaching the hard drive, then go in the opposite direction to close everything up. If you have one of these old machines, you’re probably best off seeking the services of a third-party Mac repair shop to do the SSD swap. So, Can I Really Do This Myself? After I published my first SSD swapping article, several commenters opined that they felt the upgrade was too difficult for regular people to handle on their own.
In my opinion, reasonable people — given their particular skills, concern levels about technology, and Mac models — will differ on this subject. I personally find 30 minutes of using a suction cup, screwdrivers, and tweezers a lot easier than remodeling a bathroom or changing a car’s tire. But you may feel otherwise, and some Mac models are more complex than others. There’s no shame in saying a particular DIY project isn’t right for you. If opening your Mac isn’t up your alley, you have options., currently priced at $100-$110 depending on city, with a promise that a technician will arrive at your location with “the right tools and experience to complete the installation quickly, correctly, and safely the first time.” Data transfer is also included in the price.
You can add this to your cart at the time of SSD purchase. Alternately, you can seek out a local Mac repair shop to do the hard drive to SSD swap. Be prepared to pay between $50-$100 (plus the cost of the SSD and possibly other parts), and transport your Mac to and from the shop in its original packaging to avoid damaging it in transit.
You’ll also want to make sure the shop has specific experience in Mac hard drive replacements, and is insured in the event something goes wrong, as these are the only potentially important differences between hiring someone else and doing it yourself. Conclusions From my perspective, adding an SSD to an old Mac is the best investment you can make to keep it going; you’ll begin to notice how much faster it is pretty quickly after the installation process is complete. The machine will resume from sleep instantly, reboot in seconds, and load apps as if they’re tiny. Large photo libraries will scroll with zips rather than chugs, and finding files will be a snap. Until there’s a major breakthrough in macOS software development that demands a substantially better CPU or GPU, your old Mac will be a viable (and faster) daily driver — not bad for only $150 or so. Author, lawyer, and award-winning restaurateur Jeremy Horwitz started his journalism career in the early 1990’s, covering video games as a freelancer for numerous publications before creating and running Ziff Davis’s Intelligent Gamer magazine. A graduate of Cornell Law School, he previously ran editorial for the Apple-centric site iLounge and created the historic iLounge Pavilion at CES before joining 9to5Mac and 9to5Toys as a Senior Editor.
A lifelong consumer electronics expert and gourmet, he now focuses on the changing ways people work, play, eat, and travel. His Spanish restaurant Aro Bar de Tapas won Best New Restaurant (Opened 2015-2016), Best Charcuterie, Best Craft Cocktails, and Best Desserts awards.
Even in 2018, MacBooks still have tiny hard drives that fill up quickly. Luckily there are quick and easy ways to free up space on your hard drive. Here’s how to clean up your Mac and reclaim some drive space. You can obviously free up disk space by simply doing a cursory find-and-delete for big files and other things that you’ve downloaded, but realistically that’s only going to get you so far.
Most of the wasted space on your Mac is only going to be reclaimed if you look at lot deeper—cleaning out language files, removing duplicate files, deleting attachments, clearing temporary files, or emptying all of the Trash cans. If you fail to keep your Mac’s hard drive clean, you’re eventually going to get the dreaded “Your disk is almost full” error, so you may as well start now and clear up some space. How to Clean Up Your Mac the Easy Way If you don’t feel like spending a bunch of time to find and clean things up manually, you can use to get rid of temporary files, clean up extra language files, uninstall applications, get rid of extra files left behind by application uninstallations, find and get rid of big attachments stored in Mail, and a whole lot more. It basically has all the features of the cleaning applications we talk about in this article, but in a single app—with the exception of finding duplicate files, which you’ll still want to use for. Luckily it’s the same vendor that makes Gemini 2. And of course, there’s a free trial that shows where your free space has gone and lets you clean up some of it for free. They have a single button to clean up everything, but we’d recommend going into the details to make sure.
Note: before running any cleaning tool, you should make sure that all of your important data is backed up, just in case. Find and Remove Duplicate Files One of the trickiest things that can take up lots of drive space are duplicate files littering up your computer—this is especially true if you’ve been using the computer for a long time. Luckily there are great apps like that can be used to find and remove duplicate files with a really slick and easy interface. You can buy it on the App Store if you want — Apple had this one as their Editors’ Choice, but you’re probably better off, because they have a free trial available there.
There are a lot of other choices on the App Store and elsewhere, but we’ve used this one and had good results. Empty Your Trash Cans The Trash on a Mac is equivalent to.
Rather than permanently deleting files from within the Finder, they are sent to your Trash so you can restore them later if you change your mind. To completely remove these files and free up the space they require, you’ll have to empty your Trash. But Macs can actually have multiple trash cans, so you may need to empty several. To empty your user account’s main trash can, Ctrl-click or right-click the Trash icon at the bottom-right corner of the dock and select Empty Trash. This will delete all the files you sent to the trash from the Finder.
IPhoto, iMovie, and Mail all have their own trash cans. If you’ve deleted media files from within these applications, you’ll need to empty their trash cans, too. For example, if you use iPhoto to manage your pictures and delete them in iPhoto, you’ll have to clear the iPhoto trash to remove them from your hard drive. To do this, just Ctrl+click or right-click the Trash option in that specific application and select Empty Trash. Uninstall Applications You Don’t Use The applications you have installed on your Mac are taking up space, of course. You should uninstall them if you don’t need them—just open a Finder window, select Applications in the sidebar, and drag-and-drop the application’s icon to the trash can on your dock. Some of these applications can be taking up a ton of space.
To find out which applications are using up the most space, open a Finder window and select Applications. Click the “Show items in a list” icon on the toolbar and then click the Size heading to sort your installed applications by size. Clean Up the Huge iTunes Backups of Your iPhone or iPad If you’ve backed up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac using iTunes, you’ve probably got a bunch of massive backup files that are taking up a shocking amount of space. We were able to clear up over 200 GB of space by finding and deleting some of these backup files. To delete them manually, you can open up the following path to see the backup folders, which will have random names, and you can delete the folders found inside.
You’ll probably want to close iTunes before you do that. /Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup The easier (and much safer) way to delete them is to use, which translates those confusing folders into actual backup names so you can decide which backup you actually want to delete. Just check the things you want to remove, and then click the Clean button.
Clear Out Temporary Files Your Mac’s hard drive probably has temporary files you don’t need. These files often take up disk space for no good reason. Mac OS X tries to automatically remove temporary files, but a dedicated application will likely find more files to clean up. Cleaning temporary files won’t necessarily speed up your Mac, but it will free up some of that precious disk space.
Your web browser has a built-in option to clear out browsing data that you can use to quickly clear up a bit of space—but it’s not necessarily a great idea. These caches contain files from web pages so your browser can load the web pages faster in the future. Your web browser will automatically start rebuilding the cache as you browse, and it will just slow down web page load times as your browser’s cache grows again. Each browser limits its cache to a maximum amount of disk space, anyway. There are a lot of other temporary files on your system, which you can see by opening up Finder, using Go - Go to Folder on the menu, and using /Library/Caches to get to the cache folder. This will pull up a folder that has a ton of folders in it, which you can select and delete manually if you choose.
You can clean up temporary files easier, and much safer, by using. Just open it up and run through a scan, and then go into the System Junk section to identify all of the cache files and other things that you can clean up. Once you’ve selected what you want or don’t want to clean, just click the Clean button. One of the things that makes a utility like CleanMyMac so great is that it converts a lot of those confusing folder names into the names of the actual applications, so you can see which temporary files you’re actually deleting. The thing about temporary files, of course, is that most of them are going to come back after you use your Mac for a while.
So deleting temporary files is great, but only works for a while. Check Your Disk to See What is Taking Up Space and Find Large Files To free up disk space, it’s helpful to know exactly what is using disk space on your Mac. A hard disk analysis tool like will scan your Mac’s hard disk and display which folders and files are using up the most space. You can then delete these space hogs to free up space. If you care about these files, you may want to move them to external media — for example, if you have large video files, you may want to store them on an external hard drive rather than on your Mac. Bear in mind that you don’t want to delete any important system files.
Your personal files are located under /Users/name, and these are the files you’ll want to focus on. Remove Language Files Mac applications come with language files for every language they support. You can switch your Mac’s system language and start using the applications in that language immediately. However, you probably just use a single language on your Mac, so those language files are just using hundreds of megabytes of space for no good reason. If you’re trying to squeeze as many files as you can onto that 64 GB MacBook Air, that extra storage space can be useful. To remove the extra language files, you can use, as we’ve mentioned earlier (It’s under System Junk - Language Files). There’s also another tool called that can delete these as well, though it’s yet another tool to download for a very specific use.
Removing language files is only necessary if you really want the space—those language files aren’t slowing you down, so keeping them is no problem if you have a big hard disk with more than enough free space. Clean Up Big Attachments in Mac Mail If you’re using the built-in Mail application in macOS and you’ve had the same email account for a long time, there’s a good chance that large email attachments are taking up a ton of space on your drive—sometimes many gigabytes worth, so this is a good place to check while cleaning up your drive. RELATED: You can to save space, or run a cleanup tool to get rid of them.
If you’re using Gmail, you can set limits on how many messages are synced over IMAP by default to only show the last few thousand instead of everything. Go into Mail - Preferences - Accounts - Account Information and change the drop-down for “Download attachments” to either “Recent” or “None”. Changing this setting will help Mail not use up as much space going forward, but it doesn’t solve the problem of attachments from emails that have already been downloaded. If you want to remove those attachments, you’re going to need to follow a very annoying manual process:. Open up Mail, and click on the folder that you want to find and remove attachments for.
Use the Sort by Size option to find the biggest messages. Click on the message, and choose Message - Remove Attachments from the menu bar. This won’t delete the attachment from the mail server if you’re using IMAP.
Repeat for all the messages that you want to delete attachments for. Note: if you are using POP for your email, do not delete attachments unless you really don’t want them anymore, because they will be gone forever otherwise. If you’re using IMAP, which any modern email like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail would be using, the messages and attachments will stay on the server. Cleaning Up Email Attachments the Easy Way If you want to clean up and delete old attachments automatically, there’s only one good solution that we know of, and that’s. You can run a scan, head to Mail Attachments, and see all of the attachments that can be deleted.
Click Clean, and your hard drive will be free of them. Those attachments will still be on your email server, assuming you’re using IMAP, so you can delete everything without worrying too much. If you’re worried, you can also uncheck the box next to “All Files” and then manually select all of the files that you want to delete. Clean Up Your Downloads Folder This tip is so obvious that you’d think we don’t need to include it, but it’s something that everybody forgets to deal with—your Downloads folder is so often full of huge files that you don’t need, and it’s not something you think about.
Just open up Finder and head into your Downloads folder and start deleting everything you don’t need. You can sort by file size to quickly delete the biggest offenders, but don’t forget to look at the folders—remember that every time you open up an archive file, it automatically unzips into a folder. And those folders sit there looking innocuous but taking up tons of space on your drive. Use the Storage Tools in macOS High Sierra The latest version of macOS Sierra has a new tool to help you clean the junk out of your Mac — just go to the menu and choose “About This Mac” and then flip over to the Storage tab. Once you are there, you can go through the new settings and enable the ones that make sense to you. Store in iCloud – this new feature allows you to store your Desktop, Documents, Photos, and videos in iCloud and Apple will automatically free up local space as needed.
If you’re on a slow internet connection, you probably don’t want to enable this. Optimize Storage – the name doesn’t really match the feature, which basically deletes purchased iTunes movies and TV shows after you’ve watched them to keep them from cluttering up your drive. Since movies, especially in HD format, are extremely large files, this can help keep your Mac from running out of space. You can, of course, download them again any time if you’ve purchased them. Empty Trash Automatically – this is fairly simple, if you turn this on Apple will automatically delete old items out of the trash after they have been in there for 30 days.
Reduce Clutter – this will help you find the biggest files on your hard drive and delete them. It’s a little clunky and not as easy to use as some of the third-party tools, but it does work. Be sure to also remove other files you don’t need.
For example,. Like program installers on Windows, they’re useless after the program is installed. Check your Downloads folder in the Finder and delete any downloaded files you don’t need anymore.