Getting Used to Mac #1

When I first got a Macbook Pro, the first thing that I can not understand was the amount of usage of hard disk. That was brand new hardware and even if I installed a bunch of applications it has 120G of hard disk. And actually my desktop what I run in my home with windows machine, even if I’m not exactly sure at this moment but it had about same hard disk space.

And I started to digging what is the problem and or where is using my hard disk the most. First of all, I reduced my Boot Camp partition from 40G to 25G. That was already 10G. And then I removed all my iTunes music library iPhotos, Movie files, and Program install files from my hard disk. I think that was about 30G or more.

After that action, I could have about 40G of free hard disk from about 5G of free space out of 100G only for Macintosh partition. But after some days passed, not even a week, I realized again that my Macintosh partition is up to almost more than 90G up to 93 or 94G usage.

From that moment I started to dig more deeper on what really taking my hard disk space and what’s the real problem. I never could understand just OSX itself is too big and doubles in couple days.

First of all, I started check all my folders from top to bottom using ‘More info’ or ‘command + I’ and see the actual size of each folder. But from that was the problem. What ever I do and where ever I check I only can give maximum to 40G of disk usage even if I take in consider some system folder and hidden folders.
There was nothing that I can find using just that way.

The next thing for investigation, I downloaded a trial OmniDiskSweeper application and look through one by one of my folders. And finally I found out what was taking so much in my hard disk. There was a hidden folder named “.Username” and was using about 40G or even more for just one folder. But I couldn’t know what’s that for and how can I remove it. At that moment, I didn’t want to erase using OmniDiskSweeper whatever it is and especially without knowing what’s that the hack is that for. It could damage my system some how.

Actually there is a trick here that I didn’t mentioned and may be some one already noticed that. Yes, I turned on FileVault from my preferences. At the beginning I wasn’t really knowing what’s that means and what’s that for. The only thing I though about that was, ‘Yeah, more protection and more secure, why not?’ and with that I just turned that on.

After some investigation, I realized that using FileVault, Mac OSX creates a encrypted folder as much as or even more to protect my files in my Home folder (Username folder) and that was the hidden .Username folder for.

So basically, if you want secure your home and it contents, it is really good approach to think about using FileVault. But it will be better to keep in mind that you probably need as much as your data or even more to actually to use that.

And one more tip. Whenever you did something with your home directory and its sub-directories and try to reboot or log out, the FileVault will re-calculate and store the copied or encrypted folder and changes it’s size. Even if I’m not sure what’s the minimum difference size required from FileVault to check and try to restore or remake it.

Again, the most important tip that I found out while doing some research regarding FileVault, is if you really want to use it, try to empty all useless files under your home directory, and if there is something not really important to protect and be secured, store in some other folder outside of your home folder not even in your Desktop.
But keep in mind that your basic store for iPhoto files, iTunes, all the mails and even the cache of internet will stored under your home folder. So basically, if you really have top secret stored in your system, I’m not going to recommended to use the FileVault.

For me, right now I only have 35G of hard disk usage and even more I don’t need to worry about the reboot or re-login time to resize the encrypted folder.