All Macbooks now use SSD storage as a startup disk, and the basic version of MacBook Pro is 256GB. The storage space of this Mac startup disk cannot satisfy many of us, so we usually need to connect an external hard drive to expand the Mac storage space. In addition, we can use the external hard drive as the time machine backup location.If the storage space of the external hard drive is full, how to better release its storage space?
1. Remove the old Time machine backup
If your external hard drive stores lots of time machine backup, you can consider to delete some old backups. Click on the Time Machine icon on the menu bar, then choose the “Enter Time Machine” menu item, and then navigate to the point in time you want to delete, right click on the backup and then choose Delete All Backups of [item name].
And you can also access ~/Backups.backupdb folder to delete the old time machine backup.
2. Remove large and old files from the external hard drive
If your external hard drive stores many unnecessary large and old files, you can use Finder to search them. Select the external hard drive as the search target, and select File Size is greater than 500 MB, to view the large files
And select created date or Last modified date before some date and time to search the old files.
3. Remove .DS_Store, .Spotlight, Thumbs.db junk files
If your external hard drive been used between macOS and Windows, it will include some junk files, such as .DS_Store, .Spotlight, Thumbs.db, .TemporaryItems. and you use Finder Search feature to detect them and delete them.
How to auto remove these files from the external hard drive?
We recommend using PowerSuite - automatic feature, which can set the auto-clean up rule daily, 3 days, every week, two weeks, monthly, two months. It can remove duplicate files, large files, old files, some file types, some files with file names containing special characters. In addition, you can set up cleaning rules for the entire external disk or a particular folder.
Download and install PowerSuite, and run PowerSuite, select Automatic and check the Auto clean up time frequency, and then click the + button under the Custom cleanup objects to choose the entire external disk or a particular folder.
Select cleanup rules for the selected object, and then click the Save button.
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