Macbook Software Updates?

[berri]

I clicked on the software updates icon as usual because it was bumping up and down, but after I'd agreed to install the new updates, a message popped up saying :

Your hard disk does not have enough space.
1.5 GB is required to download and install the updates. Extra space is required for the optimization process. To free up space, remove files from your startup disk, then try again.

Have copied & pasted!

Does this mean there are too many things like photos etc on the computer? Or are there other things I could delete which would free up space?

There are only about 10 albums on the laptop so I don't really want to delete any of them.

Any advice gratefully received!

Something is taking up all the space....

Open up a Finder Window, browse to somewhere on your disk and at the bottom of the window it should tell you how much space is left. What's the figure?

It's also worth emptying the trash and see if that gives any space back.

1.16GB...is that a lot? I'm completely clueless with things like this.

Will empty trash...

No, that's not a lot at all and you need to work out where it's all gone.

If you don't see a huge increase when you empty the trash then try this...

1. Open up Finder
2. Click on your User Name and the little house Picture.
3. Right click (or hold CTRL and click) on each of the folders that appear (e.g. Music, Pictures etc.) and select "Get Info". You should then be told what the "Size" of each folder is. Try and work out which one is taking up the space.

Also does anyone else use your Macbook with their own user account or are you the only user?

What sort of Macbook do you have and what disk size is in it?

BadgerPaws - thanks so much for the info, can't delete the trash till I've checked with DH about whether he's got any work stuff on here (answers your 2nd question!) but it's great to have a step-by-step process to try next, otherwise I'd have ended up in the Mac shop!

Niceguy2 - no idea & no idea

How bad is that! I bought it about 3 or 4 years ago, it feels like a tank now compared with the new ones! But it's still working great...

To find out how big your disk is right click on it's icon on your desktop and select "Get Information".

To be honest though no matter how big it is having only 1GB free is a problem, and being unable to run the updates illustrates how big of a problem that is. You're system could be missing an important update.

So go through the folders under your user name and find out the size of each one.

And then if your DH has his own account get him to repeat the process for his folders under his log in.

And then you can find out who to blame for taking up all the disk space :)

But as said above you really do have to sort this out and as a very rough rule of thumb I'd suggest that you want at least 10gb free on the disk.

BadgersPaws, thanks for that info, good to know that I've got so little space left, I'll get onto it asap and clear some stuff off here!

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.