fic tech frustration

[lobelia321]

So last night I wanted to post my Haiti Orli/Dom fic for msilverstar! I could tinker with it for weeks but I thought: this is 11 months late; this is the first fic I've finished in almost 2 years; just get it out there.

However, my computer boycotted me! I tried to revise the fic: I was told 'your start-up disk is full'. I deleted applications and files; still I was told 'you cannot save this file, your start-up disk is full'. I clawed at the screen to no avail. So I pasted the whole thing into an eye-locked LJ post (so that somehow something would be saved) and stumbled on off to bed.

Now what? I remember a few years ago I moved all of my SGA movies onto a usb stick. *stares at Verbotene Liebe clips and weeps*

But really, techsavvy people: is there a quick fix to this? I have an iBook MacOs 10.4.11. The Activity Monitor informs me that I have 'space utilized: 55.31 GB' and 'space free: 466.04 MB'. (Hm, an improvement over last night when it said 'space free: 0'. Sometimes just turning kit off and letting it have a good night's rest will do wonders, it appears.)

I keep trying to find big, big unwanted files to delete and spotted something called Entourage Daemon. At least I think that's what it was called as I have now trashed it and emptied the trash. Marble Blast had to go but how can I delete the Sims or Second Life or all my film clips or my fics or the draft of my book??? Meep.

Comments

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

film clips and other media to USB sticks -- works for me (and USB sticks are getting incredibly cheap, 16GB for £16 on Amazon)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes. *nods sagely* I have told myself this and purchased a usb stick to put all my SGA movies on when this happened before. Except I miss having access whenever I want! What if I need to watch an episode when away from my usb stick???

Cleft stick. Well, I'll have to bite that bullet. And that mixed metaphor.

[ook.livejournal.com]

Flush the cache on any web browsers that you've been using. Delete any apps or large files that you don't need to try free up some disk space. Once you've flushed and deleted some stuff, you need to reboot.

These days, you should really have 1 or 2 gigs free disk space for the computer to properly function.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I flushed the cache! It worked wonders! I deleted one Office app and now my files are behaving oddly... but as it's only hateful Microsoft I thumb my nose at those files.

Thanks re tip.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an external drive might be a good investment too.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I own an external drive, indeed I do. I think it's in the shed somewhere. Or still in a box? I haven't touched it since I first uploaded stuff onto it 2 years ago (ack). These back-ups are only ever as good as their hopeless users...