It doesn’t matter how large your hard disk is, you’ll always run short of space eventually. While trying to free up some space on my PowerBook for a video project, I came across these handy utilities for understanding where all your space has gone and freeing up space that’s wasted:
– [Disk Inventory X](http://www.derlien.com/) – Gives a graphical representation of how much disk space is taken up by various types of files, and allows you to identify and delete them to free up the space. Especially good for locating videos, photos and music that you don’t need instant access to and can archive to DVD.
– [Monolingual](http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/) – Removes unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, reclaiming hundreds of megabytes of disk space. Why waste space on files for languages you don’t speak?
– [Tidy Up!](http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/TidyUp.html) – Searches out duplicate files and packages. You can also search by the tag, duration and bit installments of MP3 and AAC sound files, search the contents of the iPhoto, iTunes and iPod dababases, and synchronize deletions with iPhoto and iTunes.
– [WhatSize](http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/) – Lets you browse the folders on your disk, showing the sizes of the subfolders and files within. Helps identify large folders that you might not need (e.g. GarageBand samples, unused applications, etc).
– [FileWrangler](http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16436) – While not directly intended for recovering disk space, FileWrangler is very handy for renaming files in preparation for backing up to an external drive or burning to CD/DVD. For example, I use it to rename the DV files from my video camera with a consecutive numbering scheme so they’re in chronological order and won’t have filename clashes.
I’ve used Report and although its great, I’ve had better luck with WheresTheFreeSpace. It is Modeled after a PC application that is very popular called Treesize (but its for Mac).