how do i clean up my macbook air hard drive

That equates to anything from 400MB to 1.5GB for every 100 photos on your hard drive. Today's high resolutions come at a price - every 10-megapixel photo consumes around 4MB in JPEG format, or up to 15MB in raw format.

The biggest drain on your hard drive will, however, be your personal files, and specifically all those photos and videos you've uploaded from your brand spanking new camera and camcorder. All well and good, but yet more gigabytes of precious drive space have gone in the meantime. Again, it's easy to let them just pile up on the off-chance you might need them at some unspecified point.

Next, there are all those files you've downloaded from the internet via your browser, or received as email attachments. That can account for a few gigabytes of space easily, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. The likelihood is you've installed a fair few applications, some of which you were trying out and forgot all about during those heady days when you thought that space would last forever. If you used Disk Utility from macOS Recovery, you can now restart your Mac: choose Apple menu  > Restart.The first thing to understand is how your hard drive has become so full. The order of repair in this example was Macintosh HD - Data, then Macintosh HD, then Container disk4, then APPLE SSD. Keep moving up the list, running First Aid for each volume on the disk, then each container on the disk, then finally the disk itself.

If you're asked for a password to unlock the disk, enter your administrator password.Īfter Disk Utility is done checking the volume, select the next item above it in the sidebar, then run First Aid again.

If the button is dimmed and you can't click it, skip this step for the disk, container, or volume you selected.

If there is no Run button, click the Repair Disk button instead.

In this example, the last volume on the disk is Macintosh HD - Data.Ĭlick Run to begin checking the selected volume for errors. For each disk that you're repairing, start by selecting the last volume on that disk, then click the First Aid button or tab.

How do i clean up my macbook air hard drive