# MacBookPro



## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

I have a 2.5 year old MacBookPro laptop with 120 gb hard drive and only about 8 gb left.  I am not very savvy about operating on a Mac nor other techie things.  Can anyone suggest how I can easily get rid of stuff, where to look, etc.  Or,, is it relatively easy and inexpensive to buy a bigger hard drive or not really worth it?  Or, should I take all my itunes off this computer and just keep it on an external drive?  I don't even back my stuff up (yet, still haven't located that external hard drive I bought), 

Thanks everyone for your help.  I never ever thought I would run out of space before the computer kicked the bucket, but this thing pretty much just chugs along. I do get the rainbow ball every couple of days, but it goes away when I reboot.  

Paula ny


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

120GB is not a very large drive. Buying a larger drive is a good idea, but if you are not experienced with opening things up, you will want to find someone else to install it for you. It will only take a few minutes for someone who is experienced. Hard drives are quite inexpensive compared to prices years ago, though a smaller laptop drive will cost a bit more than a larger PC sized drive.

If iTunes content is where a majority of your hard drive space is getting eaten up, moving your iTunes library to an external drive is a good solution. Just make sure you back up the external drive as well. 

Before you do anything else, though, find that external drive and backup your hard drive. If you can't find it, get another one.


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## tlrowley (Oct 29, 2008)

I was very impressed at how easy it was to upgrade the hard drive in my MBP.  I went from 320 to 750 and it's a little sad how fast that 400  GBs are disappearing. 

I suggest doing a a full backup,  using Time Machine (it will work on the external drive when you find it!). Then install the new hard drive and use your system DVDs to format the new drive and install the OS.  Once the OS is installed,  you'll be asked how you want to setup the "new" system and one of the choices will be to install the files from the TM backup.  The backup and restore process took quite a while (even over a wired connection),  but when it was done, I couldn't tell my system was new - except for the 400 GB of free space.  An amazing process, really - all my software/music/movies/books/passwords/etc. was there - it just worked. And all for just over $100 for the new drive - ordered off amazon, of course.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

What system DVDs?  The only DVD i remember getting was one to switch from Tiger to Leopard slipped into the box and I remember being sooo mad I didn't get a computer with the new operating system like I thought I was purchasing.  Are there other DVDs that I need?  I hope I can find the original.  As you can tell, I am not too organized and right now I have a spare room that used to be my office and needs some serious decluttering in order to find things.  I'm sure everything computer related that I need is in there.  I am off to look at hard drives on Amazon (what did you buy?) and for my external hard drive and Leopard OS DVD.
Paula


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## tlrowley (Oct 29, 2008)

There is normally only one DVD shipped with Macs and that's the one you need - the Tiger to Leopard disk would do it (although you'd be a version behind - the current OS is Snow Leopard (10.6) and it's only $29 to upgrade).  That disk will have the disk utilities on it (which will handle the formatting of the new drive) and it will also have the OS. There is no difference on Macs between upgrade and "full" OS disks.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

Will I be able to use my computer while Time Machine is backing up to the external hard drive?
Paula


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## tlrowley (Oct 29, 2008)

Yes, you can use your computer, Paula.  You might want to start a backup and let it take as long as it takes.  The next backups will be shorter and shorter (as fewer files will have changed).  You certainly want to make sure that you do a final backup as last thing you do before you pull the old drive out of the laptop.

Tracey


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

You probably bought your MBP the same time I ordered my iMac. This was right at the time of the Leopard release, and my iMac shipped with the original Tiger operating system DVD (which was loaded on the iMac) and the Leopard upgrade DVD.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

You will all be happy to know that my Mbp is busy backing itself up using time machine on my western digital my book 500 gb external hard drive. I said yes to erasing everything wd I. Order to use time machine.  Hope that is correct. Does it do a new complete back up every time I do a backup or does it just backup what has been added to the computer since the last backup?

Thanks all and especially verena for staying on me to do this. Now if I can just find my disks and someone to install a hard drive internally for me I might have this computer for a few more years. I would like that.. I only found one hard drive on amazon though and it is a 500 gb. No 750 or 1 tb to be had. 
Paula Ny


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## geko29 (Dec 23, 2008)

1TB notebook drives are available, but you don't want them. They're expensive and sloooooow. You want a 7200rpm drive, which aren't available in sizes larger than 500GB. I'd probably recommend this drive, or this one. I'd install it for you, but NY is a bit of a drive from IL.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

Thanks Geko!  I will probably buy the first one, but I need to find someone to install it first.  My old tech guy isn't an apple guy.  I wrote to him, but he hasn't answered me yet.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

I am sssooooooo frustrated.  i backed everything up overnight.  Forgot to eject the drive. Plugged in back in and ejected it.  Do youo think the data is safe?  It said not ejected may damage data.

Then I decided to clean out my email, of which I have thousands upon thousands in "on my mac".  I set up folders and filter mail into them.  I tried to delete the mail without deleting the whole folder and it didn't work.  I selected all, then edit, delete, nada.  I selected all, moved to the trash on my shelf, nada.  I selected all and moved to trash up in my mail box, nada.  How the heck do I get rid of these things.  If I select one email and then hit delete, it will delete, but otherwise, nada.  there must be a way to empty these mailboxes out.  

Also, my computer is now ten times slower with the rainbow circle of death almost everytime I try and change a page, especially in mail.  I almost threw the laptop through the window I got so frustrated.  I reboot, nothing, and speaking of that my computer won't shut itself down unlesss I actually turn the power button off.  That, at least, has been true for a while.  Does apple tune up your computer once a year if you have applecare?  Any hints about things I should do.  Is there a thingy to run like defrag and that other thing windows had?
Thanks
Paula


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

If you are talking about Apple Mail, when you delete the individual emails, they go in the Trash. To delete the Trash, you can either right-click to Erase Deleted Messages, or use command-K. 

Not ejecting the drive properly will not affect the drive unless it was being written to at the time. Was the drive done backing up?

I assume the slowness you are experiencing did not just start yesterday? You said you only have 8GB left on a 120GB drive. The problem you are likely having is that there is simply not enough space on the drive. It is not advisable to have less than 10% of disk space available, as the drive is constantly be written to. Once you clear out a good number of files and get yourself to 12GB free it will get better. I would also run Disk Utility - First Aid (find it in your Applications -> Utilities folders) just for the heck of it and see if there is anything strange going on with your hard drive.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

Thanks Verena.  I can delete the emails individually in apple mail but there must be a way to select a thousand or so emails and delete them all at once?  That is what I can't seem to do and it is driving me batty.  In many ways, I found Windows easier, probably just because I used it for so long and had lots of teachers all around me.  I kind of feel alone with this mac, so thanks for helping me out.  I love how it works seamlessly, but hate how I can't figure out the simplest things.  I just do not even understand the file structure at all.
Paula


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

Selecting multiple emails is easy.

If you want to select all of the emails in a folder, Command + A.

If you want to select a series of email is a row, click the first one to highlight it, then hold down the Shift key and click the last one.

If you want to select emails that are not in a row, hold down the Command key as you select them, and only the ones you click on will be highlighted.

Once the emails you want to delete are highlighted, just click the Delete key and they will go in the Trash. Then empty the Trash by right-clicking the Trash folder, or use Command + K.

Do it in batches; you will be less likely to accidentally delete something you wanted to keep.

You might want to try different sorts as well. For instance, if you sort the From field, you can quickly get rid of all emails from a particular address.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

That's exactly what I have been doing and it looks like they go to the trash for a minute and then they end up back in my folder.  Grrrr.  Right now the spin working thing has been spinning on trash for about 30 minutes so I would guess that it's stuck.  
P.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

I wish I could look over your shoulder, what you are describing just doesn't seem possible to me. 

I do think the crux of your problem is that your hard drive is essentially full. Get rid of some of the larger files on your hard drive (movie files tend to be quite huge), then go back and work on the emails. Since the drive is so full, don't delete several large files at once, only do two or three at a time. It's going to take a while, but it took you three years to fill it up, so a few days for maintenance is not unrealistic.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

corkyb said:


> That's exactly what I have been doing and it looks like they go to the trash for a minute and then they end up back in my folder. Grrrr. Right now the spin working thing has been spinning on trash for about 30 minutes so I would guess that it's stuck.
> P.


Have you emptied the Trash lately? You can build up quite a few files in there and if you are near to the disk capacity, it might cause some slowdowns.

Mike


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