want more hard drive space? organize.

Hard drive space is precious. Without it, we can not continue to expand our Application libraries or continue to upload our digital media to our computers. The hard drive is the heart of our computer and we must keep it clean and running as smoothly as possible. That’s why, every once in a while, I try to set aside some time where I can browse through my hard drive and clean out the excess junk that has piled up over the previous few months. Here are some techniques I use to filter out unnecessary data from my hard drive.

PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL
Let us begin with the obvious, more casual forms of cleaning. Try to separate documents into organized folders and begin roaming through them to delete your unneeded data. Below, you can see a portion of my Documents section of my hard drive, separated into a few different types of folders. This includes junk mail you forgot to throw away, promotion emails you no longer need from companies such as Apple, Circuit City or Best Buy, and emails containing photos you’ve downloaded already.

Browse your way into your Library folder. Enter the Caches directory and delete the folders of any Application you no longer have installed. There’s no point in keeping it there. This is one thing that AppZapper misses when it erases an application from your system.

Make your way into iPhoto and delete any duplicate images you may have accidently uploaded twice. Now, remember, iPhoto has its own separate trash can, so don’t forget to empty it. Clear out the iChat contacts that you no longer are in contact with. Delete RSS feeds that are no longer updated or interest you and erase the vCards in Address Book that you no longer need. This is just the beginning and it may seem like nothing much, but hey, every megabyte counts.

SLIM DOWN YOUR APPS
While most of the Mac using community has made the switch to the Intel chipset, some users are still rocking their G4 or G5 Macintosh. Because of this fact, developers continue to develop universal applications, capable of running on both PowerPC and Intel based Macs. A fabulous piece of software entitled XSlimmer takes universal applications and slims them down to either only PowerPC versions or Intel versions, depending upon which type of processor your Mac contains. For some applications, the difference isn’t very noticeable, but for others, this can free up tons of megabytes worth of space! And the lack of excess code in a Universal app makes the program run smoother overall on your machine. XSlimmer is available for $11.95 (US) and trust me, it’s not risky. I’ve used it countless times.

WHAT ARE THE SIZES OF YOUR FOLDERS?
Not seeing a major increase in the available hard drive space you have? Why not take a look at what exactly is taking up what amount of your precious gigabytes? Enter WhatSize. WhatSize is a measuring tool that allows the user to quickly see all the folders on any given drive connected to your Mac in order of size (largest to smallest). See exactly which folders are the heaviest on your machine and then you can easily open them up and delete unneeded data and documents. Often times, as described on MacApper, the log folder on your hard drive can easily fill to be gigabytes upon gigabytes in size. It is safe and actually a good idea to delete this folder if it seems to be taking a lot of room up on your computer. The coolest part about WhatSize is that it’s universal and free to use.

STAY WITHIN YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE
Mac OS X is the all-in-one operating system Apple wishes for, in regards to its ability to cater to users of any nationality. Just about any language you can think of comes built-in and installed with Tiger or Leopard. This can be helpful to those non-English speaking Mac lovers. However, for us users that don’t need the other languages, it only is taking up space. So, how can we remove these excess languages from our Macs? The answer is Monolingual. Monolingual is a universal application that allows you to pick and choose which language(s) you’d like to be available to you on your Mac. You can remove other things as well, such as Input Methods. But on Intel Macs, you run the risk of completely ruining the code of your operating system if you remove anything other than languages, so just stick with that tab. Surprisingly to me, languages do take up quite a bit of space. When I removed every language except for English and Spanish, I freed up over 2GB of space on my hard drive! Monolingual is a free download.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO UNINSTALL
Last but certainly not least is the attack on your Applications folder. Many of you know about the popular application uninstaller, AppZapper, developed by Austin Sarner and Brian Ball. Using this simple program, browse through your applications and delete those that you do not use as you go. Or use the Genie feature to allow AppZapper to list every application installed on your Mac, pick and choose which you like and dislike and then delete them all in one shot.

One thing many people fear, however, is deleting the applications that come by default with Mac OS X, such as ComicLife, Quicken 2006 and Sherlock. Do not be afraid. Should you accidently delete an application you need or down the road decide you’d like to use again, you can easily reinstall it with Pacifist. Pacifist is capable of extracting DMG installer files from Apple’s Mac OS X package files contained on the 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard install discs. Simply pop the discs that came with your Macintosh into your computer and you can begin extracting and reinstalling any application you may have uninstalled. So, in short, if you don’t need an application, delete it because should you ever need the pre-installed Apple software again, Pacifist can easily come to your rescue.

In today’s world, our hard drive space is quickly eaten up. Kilobytes turn into megabytes and megabytes turn into gigabytes. Before we know it, we’re left without any space to expand upon. Follow these steps regularly (every month or two) and you should maintain a healthy, spacious hard drive for further expansion.

What are some of your techniques for cleaning your hard drive? Do you use any specific applications that were not listed here? Do share in the comments!