How To Clean Mac Hard Drive Free

  1. How To Clean Mac Hard Drive Free
  2. How To Clean Up Mac Hard Drive For Free
  3. How To Clean A Macbook Pro Hard Drive

Lack of storage on hard drive is the culprit of a slow Mac. Therefore, to optimize your Mac's performance, it is essential for you to develop the habit of cleaning up Mac hard drive regularly, especially for those who have a smaller HDD Mac. In this post, we'll show you how to see what's taking up space on your Mac hard drive and how to clean Mac more effectively and easily. The tips are applicable to Mac OS Sierra, Mac OS X El Capitan, OS X Yosemite, Mountain Lion and another old version of Mac OS X.

An formally supported Mac OS X or macOS suitable computer systems are required. 1.5 GB is the minimum available hard drive space requirement. For the sake of NetUpdate security updates, an internet connection is also needed. The suitable languages with the Mac Washing Machine are English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. The remedy is usually obvious: you should clean up your hard drive. But there are a number of methods to do so and all of them are worth learning. In this guide, we will show you how to clean a hard drive on a Mac using both built-in tools and several specialized apps. Before removing files from the hard drive, it would be wise to make its backup. May 17, 2019 How to clean up Mac hard drive space? Here are few tips that would help you to unload your hard drive. Delete unnecessary apps and games. Most of us will have games, apps and other content that is no longer needed taking up hard drive space. Even Mac’s, with as much memory as some of them are equipped with, run out of space eventually. Simple cleaning of a Mac hard drive can be done in any other similar way. In this article, I will discuss the top methods how to clean a mac hard drive and get some free disc space. During the working process, a hard drive, in any case, does not have to get beyond its 80% capacity.

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What's Taking Up Space on Mac Hard Drive

Before the clean-up, let's see what's taking up space of your Mac's hard drive so that you will know what to clean to get a faster Mac. Here is how you can check your hard drive storage on Mac:

Step 1. Click the Apple icon at the top-left corner of your screen.

Step 2. Choose About This Mac.

Step 3. Select Storage.

You'll see that there are six kinds of data that are eating up your storage: photos, movies, apps, audios, backups and other. You probably have no doubt about the first five kinds of data but get confused about what this 'Other' storage category is. And sometimes it is the 'Other' data that takes up most of the space on your hard drive.

In fact, this mysterious Other category includes all data that can't be identified as photos, movies, apps, audios, backups. They could be:

Documents such as PDF, doc, PSD;

Archives and disk images, including zips, dmg, iso, etc;

Various types of personal and user data;

System and applications files, such as user library items, user caches and system caches;

Fonts, app accessories, application plugins, and app extensions.

Mac

Now that we know what's taking up the space of the Mac hard drive, we can search for the unwanted files and delete them to clean up space. However, this is much more troublesome than it sounds. It means that we have to go through folder by folder to find the unwanted files. Moreover, for system/application/users files in Other category, we don't even know the exact locations of these files.

That's why developers create different Mac cleaners to make cleaning easier and more effective for Mac users. Macube Cleaner(opens new window), the program that will be introduced below, is top-ranked among its kind.

How To Clean Mac Hard Drive Free

Use Practical Tool to Clean Your Mac Hard Drive Effectively

Macube Cleaner(opens new window) is the best Mac cleaner that you can download from the following button. It allows users to free clean up your Mac for 500 GB space, so that you can try to optimize Mac before the purchasing.

You can use the program to:

Identify system files that can be safely removed from hard drive;

Scan out junk files and delete the useless data;

Sort out big and old files by size, date at once, making it easier for you the identify useless files;

Remove iTunes backups completely, especially the unneeded backup files.

Step 1. Launch Macube Cleaner

Launch Macube Cleaner. You can see the concise homepage as below.

Step 2. Get Rid of System Junk

Click Smart Scan to preview and delete system data that you need no more, including app cache, system logs, system cache, user logs, so that you don't have to look through every single files on your Mac.

Step 3. Remove Large and Old Files

Comparing to finding big/old files manually, Macube Cleaner will locate those files that are obsolete or too large more quickly. Just click Large & Old Files and choose the contents to remove. You can select these files by date and by size.

As you can see, Macube Cleaner can help you speed up Mac and clean all things that are eating up the space of your Mac hard drive, including not only caches and media files, but also data that you don't know about. Most of its features are used in one click. Why not get it on your iMac/MacBook and try it yourself?

Jun 01, 2020 macOS Recovery makes it easy to reinstall the Mac operating system, even if you need to erase your startup disk first. All you need is a connection to the Internet. If a wireless network is available, you can choose it from the Wi-Fi menu, which is also available in macOS Recovery. OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the much-awaited latest version of OS X Operating System from Apple, was announced and soon made available to public. As soon as the launch of latest Apple desktop OS happened, there were instant comparisons between OS X Mavericks and OS X Yosemite.Macbook users or iMac users can get free download of Apple OS X Yosemite from Mac App Store to check out its.

So, you’ve decided to download an older version of Mac OS X. There are many reasons that could point you to this radical decision. To begin with, some of your apps may not be working properly (or simply crash) on newer operating systems. Also, you may have noticed your Mac’s performance went down right after the last update. Finally, if you want to run a parallel copy of Mac OS X on a virtual machine, you too will need a working installation file of an older Mac OS X. Further down we’ll explain where to get one and what problems you may face down the road.

Apr 02, 2020 Backup your data. Reinstalling OS X will erase all of the data on your computer. Because of this, you should ensure that all of your important documents, photos, videos, and other files are copied onto at least one other storage location. You can burn your backup files to a DVD, copy them to an external hard drive, or even upload them to online storage. Oct 29, 2019 In this tutorial, I would try to cover up as much detail I could to help you Reinstall a Clean Mac OS on to your Macbook or iMac. I recommend you to use 16GB or higher USB drive. Also, make sure to backup all your files and data before you initiate the setup.

How To Clean Mac Hard Drive Free

How To Clean Mac Hard Drive Free

A list of all Mac OS X versions

We’ll be repeatedly referring to these Apple OS versions below, so it’s good to know the basic macOS timeline.

Cheetah 10.0Puma 10.1Jaguar 10.2
Panther 10.3Tiger 10.4Leopard 10.5
Snow Leopard 10.6Lion 10.7Mountain Lion 10.8
Mavericks 10.9Yosemite 10.10El Capitan 10.11
Sierra 10.12High Sierra 10.13Mojave 10.14
Catalina 10.15

STEP 1. Prepare your Mac for installation

Given your Mac isn’t new and is filled with data, you will probably need enough free space on your Mac. This includes not just space for the OS itself but also space for other applications and your user data. One more argument is that the free space on your disk translates into virtual memory so your apps have “fuel” to operate on. The chart below tells you how much free space is needed.

Note, that it is recommended that you install OS on a clean drive. Next, you will need enough disk space available, for example, to create Recovery Partition. Here are some ideas to free up space on your drive:

  • Uninstall large unused apps
  • Empty Trash Bin and Downloads
  • Locate the biggest files on your computer:

Go to Finder > All My Files > Arrange by size
Then you can move your space hoggers onto an external drive or a cloud storage.
If you aren’t comfortable with cleaning the Mac manually, there are some nice automatic “room cleaners”. Our favorite is CleanMyMac as it’s most simple to use of all. It deletes system junk, old broken apps, and the rest of hidden junk on your drive.

Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.4 - 10.8 (free version)

Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.9 (free version)

Download CleanMyMac for OS 10.10 - 10.14 (free version)

STEP 2. Get a copy of Mac OS X download

Normally, it is assumed that updating OS is a one-way road. That’s why going back to a past Apple OS version is problematic. The main challenge is to download the OS installation file itself, because your Mac may already be running a newer version. If you succeed in downloading the OS installation, your next step is to create a bootable USB or DVD and then reinstall the OS on your computer.

How to download older Mac OS X versions via the App Store


If you once had purchased an old version of Mac OS X from the App Store, open it and go to the Purchased tab. There you’ll find all the installers you can download. However, it doesn’t always work that way. The purchased section lists only those operating systems that you had downloaded in the past. But here is the path to check it:

  1. Click the App Store icon.
  2. Click Purchases in the top menu.
  3. Scroll down to find the preferred OS X version.
  4. Click Download.

This method allows you to download Mavericks and Yosemite by logging with your Apple ID — only if you previously downloaded them from the Mac App Store.

Without App Store: Download Mac OS version as Apple Developer

If you are signed with an Apple Developer account, you can get access to products that are no longer listed on the App Store. If you desperately need a lower OS X version build, consider creating a new Developer account among other options. The membership cost is $99/year and provides a bunch of perks unavailable to ordinary users.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that if you visit developer.apple.com/downloads, you can only find 10.3-10.6 OS X operating systems there. Newer versions are not available because starting Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.7, the App Store has become the only source of updating Apple OS versions.

Purchase an older version of Mac operating system

You can purchase a boxed or email version of past Mac OS X directly from Apple. Both will cost you around $20. For the reason of being rather antiquated, Snow Leopard and earlier Apple versions can only be installed from DVD.

Buy a boxed edition of Snow Leopard 10.6
Get an email copy of Lion 10.7
Get an email copy of Mountain Lion 10.8

The email edition comes with a special download code you can use for the Mac App Store. Note, that to install the Lion or Mountain Lion, your Mac needs to be running Snow Leopard so you can install the newer OS on top of it.

How to get macOS El Capitan download

If you are wondering if you can run El Capitan on an older Mac, rejoice as it’s possible too. But before your Mac can run El Capitan it has to be updated to OS X 10.6.8. So, here are main steps you should take:

1. Install Snow Leopard from install DVD.
2. Update to 10.6.8 using Software Update.
3. Download El Capitan here.

“I can’t download an old version of Mac OS X”

If you have a newer Mac, there is no physical option to install Mac OS versions older than your current Mac model. Hp laserjet p2035 driver mac os x 10.8. For instance, if your MacBook was released in 2014, don’t expect it to run any OS released prior of that time, because older Apple OS versions simply do not include hardware drivers for your Mac.

Clean Hard Drive Reinstall Mac Os X 10.100 Yosemite

But as it often happens, workarounds are possible. There is still a chance to download the installation file if you have an access to a Mac (or virtual machine) running that operating system. For example, to get an installer for Lion, you may ask a friend who has Lion-operated Mac or, once again, set up a virtual machine running Lion. Then you will need to prepare an external drive to download the installation file using OS X Utilities.

After you’ve completed the download, the installer should launch automatically, but you can click Cancel and copy the file you need. Below is the detailed instruction how to do it.

STEP 3. Install older OS X onto an external drive

Clean Hard Drive Reinstall Mac Os X 10.100

The following method allows you to download Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks.

  1. Start your Mac holding down Command + R.
  2. Prepare a clean external drive (at least 10 GB of storage).
  3. Within OS X Utilities, choose Reinstall OS X.
  4. Select external drive as a source.
  5. Enter your Apple ID.

Now the OS should start downloading automatically onto the external drive. After the download is complete, your Mac will prompt you to do a restart, but at this point, you should completely shut it down. Now that the installation file is “captured” onto your external drive, you can reinstall the OS, this time running the file on your Mac.

  1. Boot your Mac from your standard drive.
  2. Connect the external drive.
  3. Go to external drive > OS X Install Data.

Locate InstallESD.dmg disk image file — this is the file you need to reinstall Lion OS X. The same steps are valid for Mountain Lion and Mavericks.

How to downgrade a Mac running later macOS versions

If your Mac runs macOS Sierra 10.12 or macOS High Sierra 10.13, it is possible to revert it to the previous system if you are not satisfied with the experience. You can do it either with Time Machine or by creating a bootable USB or external drive.
Instruction to downgrade from macOS Sierra

Instruction to downgrade from macOS High Sierra

Clean Hard Drive Reinstall Mac Os X 10.100 Download

Instruction to downgrade from macOS Mojave

How To Clean Up Mac Hard Drive For Free

Instruction to downgrade from macOS Catalina

Before you do it, the best advice is to back your Mac up so your most important files stay intact. In addition to that, it makes sense to clean up your Mac from old system junk files and application leftovers. The easiest way to do it is to run CleanMyMac X on your machine (download it for free here).

Clean Hard Drive Reinstall Mac Os X 10.100 Update

Visit your local Apple Store to download older OS X version

If none of the options to get older OS X worked, pay a visit to nearest local Apple Store. They should have image installations going back to OS Leopard and earlier. You can also ask their assistance to create a bootable USB drive with the installation file. So here you are. We hope this article has helped you to download an old version of Mac OS X. Below are a few more links you may find interesting.

How To Clean A Macbook Pro Hard Drive

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