MacMost Q&A Forum • View All Forum QuestionsAsk a Question

Startup Disk Has No More Space

Recently I noticed that every time I would go on Safari the spinning rainbow circle would show up. Today this message popped up “startup disk has no more space available for application memory” How do I fix this and where do I go?? I have a MacBook Pro that is a year old and I am using Lion.
—–
Andrea

Comments: 11 Responses to “Startup Disk Has No More Space”

    12 years ago

    You have simply filled up your hard drive. You need to clear things off of it that you may not need anymore. Or, perhaps archive some things to an external drive.
    I did a video on this recently:
    http://macmost.com/what-to-do-when-your-hard-drive-is-full.html

    Anthony
    12 years ago

    Grand Perspective is a great app for finding the most egregious offenders that take up themost space on your drives. You can even send the files to the trash from within Grand Perspective. Empty the trash and enjoy a faster computer.

      Andrea
      12 years ago

      Thanks, I'll look into this. is it available in the app store?

    Andrea
    12 years ago

    I did see that while searching your site but I didn't realize the startup disk and the hard drive meant the same thing.
    OK I looked under about this mac and under storage it says I have 138GB of 250GB free. When I look under Memory that says that 4GB total between 2 memory slots are full. Does this mean the RAM is full? do I do anything different for this, or do I do the same as you video instructs?

      12 years ago

      No. This means you hard drive (AKA startup disk). But if you have 138GB out of 250GB free, then you are fine. If you see the error message again, note the exact words used in the error message and put them here.

        Andrea
        12 years ago

        Thanks Gary, What i quoted on the initial question is what popped up. It made me force quit about 5 of the open applications. If it happens again i'll let you know.

    Mr Anthony Cotton
    12 years ago

    My first computer was a Mac Mini, and it only had 1GB of memory. The same thing happened to me. I was sick of getting that Spinning Wheel of Death,and the same message came up not enough room for the start up disc. The lad who new about Macs said buy an external hard drive. He went with me, and he picked My Book WD,and that solved the problem. Its still plugged in. I think Gary mentioned all the stuff that piles up in your library that you no longer use. Now and then i have a look,and i found one culprit Divx.

    Summer
    12 years ago

    Hi Gary,

    Question, I have a MacBook Air. I have 60.7GB to use and I'm currently at 59.75GB. I get that I should have at least 10GB available in order for the computer to run more efficient. All of the 59.75GB is under "other" in the storage overview. How do I figure out what "other" is...I'm guessing documents but not sure. In all other categories it says zero KB. How do I clear up enough space or find what other is???

      12 years ago

      Right. Your documents. Start going through your user folder, item by item, and see the size of everything and dig down.

    Mark f
    12 years ago

    My mac book also says startup disc full, however nothing will come up on screen except for Safari bar at the top. I dont have access to any of the folders on the cpu. How do I clear space and get computer running again. Is it possible to do this in safe mode and if so can you explain? thanks

      12 years ago

      Not sure what you are seeing there. I'd take it to an expert to have a look.

Comments Closed.