Mac OSX installation size

Nash · 2 Dec 2006 at 04:08

I understand that OSX takes more size on the hard drive than XP typically does. If I went for a 120gb hard drive, in reality it'd be about 114gb wouldn't it with all the 1,000,000 bytes thing etc. What kind of space would I be left with out of the box for other stuff?

Also, does anyone know what make of hard drive is in the MacBooks? I'm tempted to go with the smallest drive then upgrade myself to a bigger one for less money whilst still having a backup in case it failed.

FreeStream · 2 Dec 2006 at 09:06

Erm, between 1 and 4Gb, depending on language sets, drivers, all of which you can select on the installion pages.

I think mine is 2.2Gb

ic1male · 2 Dec 2006 at 12:10

You can always reinstall Mac OS X when you get it from the supplied DVDs. That way you can save about 2Gb by not installing every printer driver and further space by uninstalling GarageBand and all its loops and samples (if you don't use it) and test software like Office 2004 Test Drive.

TheVoice · 2 Dec 2006 at 13:03

Re-installed OSX on a friend's MacPro a few weeks back; default installation size was in excess of 11GB. After getting rid of the useless extra software (kept the important stuff) and the stupid amount of printer drivers and languages, it was about half that, if not even less.

x1m · 2 Dec 2006 at 16:00

Mine was 17gig!

triggerthat · 2 Dec 2006 at 18:16

Bare minimum I think is 2gb.

Steedie · 2 Dec 2006 at 18:42

I just downloaded a program called Monolingual (i think?) that deletes all the langauges and keyboard layouts etc that you dont want

Saved 3Gb of space for me, I wanna get rid of the printer drivers

But..

I put the OSX disk in and went to reinstall like people recommend but it said it would store my existing installation in a seperate folder so surely your not actually saving that much space if its keeping stuff like that behind

ic1male · 2 Dec 2006 at 19:04

You can boot from the OS X DVD by holding down C when you switch the Mac on and choose whether or not to wipe your disk / save your existing installation, etc.

Steedie · 2 Dec 2006 at 20:06

Yeah but when you save your existing installation, it still creates a new one, just it puts all the old system files in a seperate folder somewhere

So your getting rid of unwanted files in exchange for some new unwanted files

I'll just wait til I reformat

P.s Does anyone know if I just delete all the Printer Drivers in the /Library/Printers/ folder, if that deletes them completely? Or are there other traces of them throughout the system?

Spyhop · 2 Dec 2006 at 20:37

There's also going to be a file the size of your RAM to dump its contents in to when you go in to sleep mode. So, if you have 2GB of RAM then 2GB of space is going to be taken by a file in /private/var/vm/.

hartgeh3 · 24 Dec 2006 at 00:41

Steedie said:
P.s Does anyone know if I just delete all the Printer Drivers in the /Library/Printers/ folder, if that deletes them completely? Or are there other traces of them throughout the system?

Did this work mate?

As I dont want to update and to find out that I have wasted my time by updating the OSX and the reinstalling, lol

zetec452 · 24 Dec 2006 at 09:36

Steedie said:
I just downloaded a program called Monolingual (i think?) that deletes all the langauges and keyboard layouts etc that you dont want

A nice program mate. Cheers

ringo747 · 31 Jan 2007 at 22:25

JonRohan said:
A nice program mate. Cheers

tried this program today and I think i removed too much! Now some of my icons in entourage are not working and dreamweaver wont start!

edit: is there any way to undo this?? i.e restore the relevant files back

Will_3rd · 31 Jan 2007 at 22:43

jonnyc747 said:
tried this program today and I think i removed too much! Now some of my icons in entourage are not working and dreamweaver wont start!

edit: is there any way to undo this?? i.e restore the relevant files back

Try re-installing those programs, and if your having problems with Mac OSX an archive and install would do the job.

Be careful with monolingual don't remove any Processor Architectures!

ringo747 · 31 Jan 2007 at 22:53

Will_3rd said:
Try re-installing those programs, and if your having problems with Mac OSX an archive and install would do the job.

Be careful with monolingual don't remove any Processor Architectures!

i just read on another site about it and thats exactly what i've done! aggghhhhhhh

edit: how does an archive and install work? and does it affect my previously installed bootcamp?

Will_3rd · 31 Jan 2007 at 23:00

jonnyc747 said:
i just read on another site about it and that's exactly what I've done! aggghhhhhhh

edit: how does an archive and install work? and does it affect my previously installed bootcamp?

An archive and install basically just restores Mac OS X but it keeps all your settings and files. Not sure how it affects boot camp though.

ringo747 · 31 Jan 2007 at 23:01

ok so i wont lose any mails within entourage then? I have a bootable backup from earlier today on external drive but the damage was already done.

Anyone reading this... DO NOT USE MONOLINGUAL!

Anyone else know if a archive and reinstall affects bootcamp?

Will_3rd · 31 Jan 2007 at 23:08

jonnyc747 said:
OK so I wont lose any mails within entourage then?

Shouldn't do, they might be on your mail server anyway surely?

ringo747 · 31 Jan 2007 at 23:11

some of them are! If i do archive and install does that create an 'old' folder (for the archive part) somewhere than i can eventually delete?

Will_3rd · 31 Jan 2007 at 23:14

jonnyc747 said:
some of them are! If i do archive and install does that create an 'old' folder (for the archive part) somewhere than i can eventually delete?

From what I can remember I think it does, but I could be wrong