Ask The Admin

Okay, I have been politely asked by Karl to bring a little bit of Mac/Apple love to this blog. While I think this may just be part of his devious plot to get a Apple Air for review, I have agreed to oblige. So here it is my first Ask the Admin's Mac Tip.

All of the tips I will offer up are going to be answers to questions I have either had myself or that I have identified as widespread issues. My first tip is a simple one, but also a necessary one.

The Question: What the hell happened to all the space on my hard drive.

While searching for an answer to this question I found a number of methods ranging from manually cataloging the contents of all my folders (who is really that anal retentive?) to terminal queries (who really uses the terminal?). Anyway my search for the best tool led me to Disk Inventory X (external link to product download site). This program is an excellent way to concisely see what exactly is on your disks. The program has been around for a bit, and it gaining a good bit of notoriety, partially because its so pretty, but also because it is damn useful.

Did I mention it's totally free?


Disk Inventory X is an easy to use visualization tool that combs your hard disk identifying, grouping, and color coding each file. What you get is a full color representation, using treemaps, of your drive which allows you to see what files and file types are eating up your disk space. In my case, I identified 25 gigs (thats not a typo) of Samurai Jack cartoons that had been bit-torrented 2 years ago, and were sitting in a third level sub-folder where they had never been opened.

Disk Inventory X is a simple download, and once unpacked it only takes a few minutes to categorize your disk. After that, use the results to identify, delete, or relocate the file types that are eating up your space. Unfortunately Disk Inventory X cannot make the tough decisions for you, and cannot categorize files by taste, so it is up to you to delete all those N'Sync and Kenny G tracks you grabbed for that girl you were dating in 1995.

Check the program out, you won't be disappointed.

Questions or comments on this tip? Post them in the comments section. What do you guys want to see more of?

Have you entered our "It's A Fricking Laser Giveaway" Yet? What are you waiting for? This is as close to a real light sabre as you are going to get!