Is there any one out there who can give me some tips about my Mac's memory?? Please excuse me as I am Mac illiterate and using the 'rough guide' to help me. I use a Mac OS X version 10.4.9 and it's struggling at almost full capacity with only 1.29GB remaining. I have opened the Finder sidebar showing Mac Drives which shows Mac HD as using 74.52GB. The next column shows me applications = 3.96GB, system = 1.62GB, users = 40.73GB,etc (the others listed show only small capacities used eg MB &KB). This MAc is used for mainly photos 12.54GB and music 22.62GB. So I'm not sure what's taking up the memory!?!? Any ideas?? Am I looking in the wrong place?

Thanks SAL

I am Mac literate so hopefully i can help. How big is your HDD? If the Finder says you have 74.52gb used this is between all of your folders. i.e. Apps, System, User. So check your music folder and videos and ad up all your folder contents size and it should give you 74.52 GB. BTW What kind of Mac are you using?

EDIT** I added all hes up and it came out to around 74 GB. My recommendation to you is buy a new HDD, since your not mac literate go out and pick up a external USB/Firewire drive. This will be easyiest to install just requireing a quick format through Disk Utility. I use this on my PC and Mac i found it at tigerdirect >>>> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...6518&CatId=136 It works quite well. If you do decide to pick this up i would copy all of the music and pictures and stuff onto it freeing up you Boot disk, you will see improvements in boot speed and performance. I found on My mac keeping your boot drive free (even on PC) it does help your performance. I keep my primary (40gb) 50% or more free al music and such goes on this portable HDD i have (the same i've linked you too on tiger)

BTW If you need furthur mac help go here http://www.mac-forums.com the alternative OS section here at TS will always help but if you have hardware or some other issues i think Mac-Forums will help more.

Hope this Helps,
Nick

Have you ever captured any video from a DV cam or something similar on this machine? Keep in mind that 1 hour (which is usually 1 tape) of uncompressed SD DV is about 13 gig.

FYI GameJunkie - the Music and Photos folders are located within his profile folder.

Yes, i know thank you for clearing that up i see what i said now.

Since you provided how much space each directory is taking up and your hard drive capacity I'm wondering if you might have confused low RAM and low HD space?

What prompted this post? Are you getting low disk space warnings or are you getting some other memory warnings?

I'd also recommend an external drive, for a Mac a firewire would be the most versatile as you can do some cool things with them and even use them as your OS drive. But USB 2.0 would likely work just as well because you may not ever utilize the enhanced abilities you'd get with firewire.

And firewire can be a bit faster.