Full Hard Disk - WARNING

The hard disk on my G4 iMac 10.2.8 was getting full, after over keen use of a new camera.

So I got a new La Cie 1TB external drive to replace the old 250 GB drive, thinking I could unload files and make more space.

In the process I saw some warning messages that bad things would happen if I carried on using computer with so little spare space [ a few hundred MB].

There did not seem to be much option so some folders were dragged to TRASH, but now TRASH will not empty.
Worse, Mail will not open as it states there are no accounts.
And trying to do some move/delete activities gets stopped by "insufficient space" error messages.

I don't know if there are any articles in Knowledge Base or elsewhere on how to get out of this mess, but in my opinion, my advice is to never get in the mess in the first place, and make sure you always have at least 1 GB available space on the hard disk.

Doing anything from a GUI tends to eat space, have you tried deleting stuff using the command line?

(And no, beyond suggesting you start with "man rm" I don't know what commands to suggest!)

It's really best to ensure that you have at least 10% free space on any disk drive. So 25GB rather than 1.

I agree with Bill that your best chance is to use terminal to remove some files. Just change to the directory containg the files ("cd" changes directory - change to the root with "cd /" and then work your way down) and then type "rm filename". Just make sure you get the right file!

Alternatively, if you have another Mac, you could boot in firewire target disk mode and delete the files from another Mac.

I give this advice based on the assumption that you didn't put system files and folders into the trash bin

Open up a terminal window and type "ls -la"
This should show you all the files and folders in your home directory (including hidden files)
You should see one called .Trash - this is your trash bin.
Type "cd .Trash"
if you run an "ls -la" this will list everything currently in your trash. Confirm that everything in there is ok to be removed.
If there is something you want to keep, you will need to move it to your external storage, this can be done by typing "mv <name of file> /location/of/external/drive". You can get this by typing "mount" in the command line.

Finally, with that all done, type the command "rm -r *" - this will delete everything in your trash (so make sure you are in the trash directory)

That will clear out your trash and hopefully give you a bit more room on your hard drive to work with

Many thanks for the helpful suggestions.
Shows what a good forum this is, with positive help freely available.
When you are stuck it makes all the difference to be able to share a problem with others who are more experienced.
I have now managed to move iPhoto Library to the LaCie 1TB external drive, giving me free space of 5 GB on the 38 GB internal hard drive.
So I can now do some housekeeping.

Good luck.

I am just in the process of rescuing my daughter's iBook G4 having managed to do a back up just before the hard-drive seemed to give up the ghost. I didn't like the symptoms she explained to me or the strange noise when I eventually managed to get beyond a flashing ? at start-up. So have now installed a new larger hard drive and reinstalled the OS but having to get as far as 10.5 before Time Machine can take over so still in the process of updating but so far so good.

I must say replacing a hard-drive in one of these machines is not an easy or quick task - talk about making things difficult. But a calm and patient manner was rewarded.

So good luck with your task

In reply to a post by lenaspell:

I must say replacing a hard-drive in one of these machines is not an easy or quick task - talk about making things difficult. But a calm and patient manner was rewarded.

So good luck with your task

If it's anything like replacing the HD in a 2007 MacBook Pro then it's not an easy task. Far too many screws. I changed the standard HD to an SSD, now it's 20sec from pressing the power button to the desktop.

I wasn't sure whether the 2005 iBook G4 was up to handling an SSD so opted for the larger IDE Samsung drive. As you say so many screws and parts to dis-assemble and re-assemble. I used post-its upside down so that I stuck the screw heads to the sticky part so they wouldn't wander and carefully labelled them. It worked very well.

The system is now functioning though I haven't yet got back to the OS version that introduced Time Machine so haven't yet been able to transfer back all her files and photos. I have hit a problem in that trying to get from version 10.3.9 to 10.4.9 (Tiger I think) when inserting the disk after re-start I get a kernel panic and the system hangs. If I remove the disk it loads 10.3.9 quite happily. Daughter is presently on holiday so I cannot check whether she has the Leopard disks at her home, certainly I cannot find them here anywhere. So I may have to pay a visit to the genius bar to see what is happening.