Putting My Mac on a Diet

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Diet_time
In anticipation of the move to my new MacBook Air, I decided to spend this past weekend trimming any unnecessary “fat” from my MacBook.  Before this “diet,” my hard drive weighed in at just approximately 102 GB, which was too big for the Air’s 80 GB hard drive.

After taking the steps set forth below, I managed to trim my hard drive down to a svelte 47.5 GB.  I was then able to use bring that data over to the Air using Migration Assistant.  As was the case with our new iMacs, this was a quick and easy process.

Here’s what I did for the "diet":

  • Removed extraneous language resources from Mac OS X, such as Afrikaans, Albanian, etc.  The free program Monolingual does an excellent job of removing these that I have never used and won’t ever need.  This step yielded a savings of 3.2 GB.
  • Removed printer drivers for printers that I didn’t have.  I only use two printers now, and I can always download any other drivers in the future if the need arises.  To remove these, navigate to HD/Library/Printers/ and then simply drag the unneeded ones to the trash, which saved me another 2.29 GB.
  • Downloaded and ran AppZapper to remove unwanted or unused programs.  After looking around, I found there were a few programs that I simply never use.  By zapping them, I was able to squeeze out another .5 GB.
  • Decided whether to use Parallels or VM Ware Fusion.  I saw no reason to keep both, and one of them was removed, yielding a whopping 20 GB savings.  I will post an article tomorrow discussing which of the two I kept and why.
  • Moved my iTunes library to an portable external hard drive.  I bought a Western Digital My Passport 250 GB drive that weighs only 3.7 ounces and is roughly the size of an iPhone.  It’s USB powered, so it’s extremely portable.  I can have my music and movies with me when I want to, yet avoid the extra weight the rest of the time.

3 thoughts on “Putting My Mac on a Diet”

  1. How do you integrate your macbook air (or other macs) with your document retention policy? Is there a way to automate compliance for a largely digital law practice?

  2. Great move Ben. I often think about what I would have to lose to make the Air work. Thankfully, I now run with a Desktop, so I don’t need my music with me. With some artful use of Smart Playlists and syncing those onto the Air, I think I could reduce my music needs to 2-4 GB max.
    You talk about needing Parallels or VM to run Windows, which suggests to me that the Air is now your primary machine. I’ll be interested to hear how the reduction in power and HD speed impacts your day-to-day use. If I got the Air for my practice, I would be using it solely as a mobile writing and presentation device. I’d leave the “heavy-lifting” for the MacPro in the office.
    Oh, and I’m extremely jealous!

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