Friday, July 16, 2010

Keeping Your Mac Hard Drive Clean

The Finder in Mac OS 9.Image via Wikipedia

Keeping Your Mac Hard Drive Clean

CleanMyMac 1.9 by MacPaw


macworld.com


CleanMyMac 1.9 by MacPaw


macworld.com



It's difficult to grasp how much garbage accumulates on your desk in a matter of days.


More surprising still is just how filthy your Mac gets even after one or two software installs and a few days of use.


CleanMyMac digs down into the depths of your Mac's hard drive to find extraneous files such as unused language installations, leftover or broken preference files, Universal binaries, and a variety of other files that exist but aren't necessary on your Mac.


Opening the program displays CleanMyMac's main screen where you can choose to kick off a complete system scan or choose to scan only for specific types of files.


For me, the first scan resulted in over 14GB, about 8GB of which were files in my trash that, at the time of the scan, had not been emptied.


Otherwise, it was over 2GB each of language and cache files, with a couple gigs more of other things that were lurking in the dark corners of my Mac.


Once CleanMyMac finds those extra files, it displays detailed information about what those extras are and then you can choose which files you want removed or leave untouched.


CleanMyMac also scans every new drive that you mount and lets you know if there is wasted space on those drives, too.


CleanMyMac is slick, easy to use, and likely to be one of the fastest ways to gain extra space on your hard drive.


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[Jeffery Battersby is an IT Consultant, Apple Trainer, (very) smalltime actor, and regular contributor to Macworld. He writes about Macs and more at his blog.]


We recommend these Utilities for their similarities to the CleanMyMac 1.9 in features, specs, ratings, and user interest.

CleanMyMac digs down into the depths of your Mac's hard drive to find extraneous files that aren't necessary on your Mac.

Data Rescue 3 is a program that every Mac user should at least know about, if not own outright, for those times when you need to restore important files.

Pester makes it easy and convenient to create simple alarms, timers, and reminders.

WhoPaste makes it simple to grab contact data from any source and automatically create a new contact record.

MoveAddict adds the capability to cut and paste files and folders in the Finder, along with some nifty features such as folder merging.

Software utility that's useful for removing old files, deleting all traces of uninstalled apps, and reminding you about common maintenance tasks, such as back-ups and system repairs.

Strengths: Cleans a great deal of clutter with no side effects or problems.

Overall: This app is the best investment I've ever made to keep my Mac clean and free of clutter.

I've used it for two weeks and recovered 3.56 GB of space that was pure junk.

Imagine what it would be in a year.

No problems with the aftermath of cleaning and my Mac runs faster than ever.


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