#External hard drive for imac mac os x#
(One colleague couldn't figure out why her drive was so full - until she realized that she hadn't emptied her Trash in almost four years!) You may not realize that Mac OS X (and the Classic Mac OS, too) uses the free space on your hard drive as "virtual memory", and it depends heavily on that virtual memory to run efficiently. Whether it is a huge iPhoto library, some videos you're editing, or simply an accumulation of lots of "stuff", a full hard drive can cause problems. It doesn't matter how large your hard drive is - eventually it will begin to fill up. Check it occasionally to see if there are any red flags - or keep it running for a few days (with one of the useful Dock icons or floating windows enabled) to keep an eye on when things are spiking. Activity Monitor will tell you about CPU usage, RAM requirements, virtual memory usage, and whether a given application is a PowerPC or Intel (Universal) build. How will you know about them? By using Apple's Activity Monitor, which comes with Mac OS X. There may be other things hogging your processor's attention or sucking up RAM. This will save you some valuable RAM and processor resources. If you don't use these features, verify that they are turned off. Some, however, may not be useful to you, such as Universal Access (which offers help for visually and hearing impaired users) or Bluetooth (which allows certain devices to be used wirelessly). Apple has generously included a number of very useful features as preferences. While System Preferences is open, take a look at a few other things. However, be sure that you know what you're removing otherwise, you may kill some critical function for the next time you restart. To remove them, simply select the item by clicking on its name and then hit the "minus" button at the bottom of the list. You may be surprised at how many there are. You can find out what is in your startup items list by navigating to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items. Some applications automatically (or when asked) set themselves as a "startup item", which causes them to open at every restart or login. They should be manually removed so that my iMac runs in a smooth condition, or simplify the jobs with the iMac cleaner. There are still a few hidden data and applications inside my iMac that is still hogging the disk space.
#External hard drive for imac software#
The initial reaction if the iMac is slow is that I delete a couple of applications and software to widen its memory space however, that would never solve the problem. Getting frustrated with my slow iMac will get me nowhere.