The Wheel Keeps Turning
Our Mac has been in service for many years, and has worked extremely well throughout all that time. Lately, though, it had been acting sluggish, and, even though I took the time to clean and de-clutter my computer, I noticed that we were getting a ton more junk e-mail than usual, which took more and more time each day to delete.
Alert!
By and by, we started seeing an alarming message in a window keep popping up that warned us our disk space was almost full and we should delete files. There was a mere 200KB or so of disk space. I took even more time to go through every application and delete anything I thought we would never need again: a Lego Universe application that no one used anymore, a downloaded school lunch menu from 2010, the minutes from a town meeting three years ago. But the message kept coming up, and each time I checked the disk space available, it never changed.
A Clean Sweep
Finally, I did a couple of things that seem to have worked. First, I bought a 500GB external hard drive for $69.99 and backed up our entire Mac. Even though we had performed Time Machine back-ups periodically, we never backed up our computer on an external hard drive. We're also making use of the convenient iCloud storage just in case. I am pretty confident that we will never lose anything permanently.
Second, after backing everything up, I deleted tons of MLS photos and movies from my home staging business that had already been burned to CDs and DVDs. I have access to all my old photos and movies anytime I want them, just like the olden days when my photos and movies were printed on Kodak paper and recorded on VHS tapes.
I also deleted tons of old email in our inbox, our sent box, and in other folders we had created. Then, and this is VERY IMPORTANT: I erased all deleted items from all accounts.
Disaster Avoided
Suddenly we went from having 250KB available on our disk space to having a whopping 20GB available! Now, not only don't we get that alarming message anymore, but we are no longer getting the huge amount of junk email that we had been getting. It has been reduced by almost 100%. Now, how should I spend all that extra time I have now?.......Hmm....blog posts maybe???
Image courtesy Grant Cochrane/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Comments(3)