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Questions tagged [hard-drive]

A hard drive is a device for permanent or long-term storage in computers.

Hard drives are non-volatile random-access storage devices. They can be in the form of magnetic disks or solid-state flash memory. Data stored on hard drives will remain stored after a computer is powered off. With advances in technology in the last few years, solid-state drives, which offer significantly better performance, are becoming more affordable. Solid-state drives (SSDs) offer reliability benefits over traditional drives as they are more shock-resistant due to there being no moving parts.

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Is it safe to delete ~/Library/Caches?

Is it safe to delete the file Caches, in the Library of the Mac OS X Hard Drive? It's a pretty big file, 3.56 GB, Caches reminds me of logs i don't need or browser cookies. Is it safe to delete the folder "Caches"?
GummyArgyle
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How do I get detailed SMART disk information on OS X (Mavericks or later)

I'm trying to get a detailed SMART status report on the drives in my Mac. I'm not talking about "Verified," I'm talking about the detailed report that's about 100 lines long listing all the vital statistics of the drive. Anyone know how to do this…
Mike Akers
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How to check if my HD is case sensitive or not?

How can I get information if my HD format is case sensitive or case insensitive? I want to make sure my Mac running Mountain Lion has a case sensitive file system.
GusDeCooL
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What is com.apple.bird? Why does it grow so big?

When trying to clean up their hard disk, some users discover ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.bird is pretty big, sometimes in the order of many gigabytes. What is it?
hectorpal
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Time Machine ridiculously slow after El Capitan upgrade

I recently updated to El Capitan, and told Time Machine to backup. It got stuck on Preparing Backup for hours, so I stopped it, deleted the InProgress file, rebooted and tried again. After ~30 mins, Time Machine was still preparing. I looked into…
CraftedCart
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Do Macs need to be defragmented?

I don't see any application to defragment my Mac (running OS X). Is defragmenting not necessary for Mac OS X? If so, why not?
spong
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How do I clear the purgeable area on my disk?

I cleared space on my disk by deleting files and emptying trash. But, I am unable to make use of the space that I freed up. That is, as you can see the disk reports 142 GB as Available with 83 GB of that as purgeable. So I should have plenty of…
Josh
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How to eject my external drive when my Mac refuses because of Spotlight?

I have plugged an external disk to my Mac. Now, I want to eject it. But my Mac stubbornly refuses and says that an application may be using the disk. I have not launched any app neither opened any file from the disk. I have downloaded and installed…
Nicolas Barbulesco
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External Hard Drive Won't Mount

I've searched and tried a lot of stuff but still can't get it to work. I was able to use my seagate HDD properly last week but now it doesn't mount. I tried plugging it to a PC & another mac, it works fine on both. The reasons could be Updating OS…
demiculus
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What is the difference between a "sparse disk image" and a "sparse bundle disk image"?

What are the differences between sparse and sparse bundle disk images?
user588
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How do I make the hard drive visible in the Finder?

On OS X Lion I don't see the hard drive in the Finder and I seem to have no permission to create a folder under / from terminal. I know I can do this if I activate the root user, but I need to be able to see the directories I have created under / in…
shebelaw
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What are the differences between journaling HFS+ and non-journaling HFS+?

I'm about to format an external hard disk drive (HDD). What are the key differences between journaling HFS+ and non-journaling HFS+? Apart from the fact that one has journaling and the other does not, how does it affect the drive's performance (with…
Jari Keinänen
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Unable to format / erase hard drive

I have an external HD that died on me a while ago and I'm trying to see if I can format / erase it to start using it again. The disk does not show up in Finder but I can see it in Disk Utility. When I try to erase it from there I get Disk Erase…
stef
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What is the best way to clone a disk between two Macs?

What is the best way to clone a disk between two Macs? I ask this every couple years or so and every time I get the same answer. "Use Carbon Copy Cloner", they say. But the unfortunate fact is that CCC is a file-level copy between disks. When I…
erotsppa
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USB Drive Will Not Mount, Not Listed in Disk Utilities, but Found In System Profiler

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Go drive with the optional docking station. I use it to keep files that I don't access on a regular basis and as a place to do "quick backups" of things like my Paperless library or my Lightroom Catalog. This morning, I…
Allan
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