Mac hardrive is too full
- Thread starter clarke
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If you can provide info on your Mac (model)/system software/drive (HD or SSD) and size/memory. The particulars with your Mac can easily be detailed by providing us with your Mac’s model identifier in About This Mac > More Info > System Report > Hardware Overview. Knowing this, it will be easier to focus on your exact needs.
Your immediate solution could be an external drive. I’m about to update a thread here on that matter. Stay tuned.
MacOS Monterey Processor 2.2 GHZ Quad-Core Core i7
Memory 16 GB
18.15 GB available of 250.79GB. Flash Storage
MacintoshHD 35.75 GB available of 250.79 on HArd rive
I hope this is the information I will be helpful. Thank you for your interest. Clarke
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Clarke, thank goodness for your 16 gibibytes of memory, but the 256 GB of storage is very inadequate, especially considering your work with Photoshop and Lightroom. In my opinion, your least painful upgrade path is to add an external drive to your Mac. I recommend getting a two terabyte Samsung T7 external SSD for around $130. Or, if your are partial to SanDisk, the SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD is in the same category. The one terabyte models are slightly more than half the price, but you probably will regret not getting the larger one on the long run. Either will require USB 3.2 at least, so check your specs before shopping.
Since you can direct Photoshop to use another drive for its scratch disk, you can point it to your external SSD. I haven’t done much work in Lightroom, but I assume you can do the same as with it. This will free up your main SSD, and you can move the bulk of your documents as well. That should give macOS plenty of room for memory swaps and scratch/snapshot files.
You can even experiment with installing a second copy of macOS on the external drive. Imagine how much swap and scratch space that will give you. And finally, you must have at least one Time Machine drive, if not two. I probably don’t need to explain that.
By the way, I’m working on adding to a thread here, regarding adding external SSDs, in a day or two. You may want to wait that long. I just added a two-terabyte Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 in an external Acasis enclosure to my Mac Studio, although this will require a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 connection.