Mac OS10.5.1 has a huge library folder–more than 40GB?

August 30th, 2009 | by admin |

I have Mac OS 10.5 for about 1 month, but today I found that my hard drive has been full. I found that I have a huge Library folder under my user’s folder. It is more than 40GB. I think it is not right. Can anyone give me any suggestion about this?

Thanks a lot.
I checked the folders in the Library, and it seems that the folder named "PreferencePane" is super huge. It actually was calculating its size and it won’t show me that size for a long tim.

From Utilities folder, run the Disk Utility by choosing Disk First Aid tab. You should choose ‘Repair Permissions’. This would repair read-write permissions and fix any problems your Mac might come across. It’s similar to Windows’ Defrag.

Should the problem remains, try download third-party Utilities like Xupport. It would most likely fix your problem.

Hope this helps.

Edit:

You should also check Desktop, Applications, Movies, Music and Pictures inside your Library folder.

EDIT 2:

Since the culprit seems to be PreferencePanes folder, why don’t you just open it to check each one.

Normally, the library size shouldn’t be even a third of what you’ve got.

  1. 6 Responses to “Mac OS10.5.1 has a huge library folder–more than 40GB?”

  2. By T Ninja on Aug 30, 2009 | Reply

    Clear your cache, cookies, run a disk defragment. Chances are most of that is dead spaced from installations, or mac os 10.5 is just MASSIVE, like 7 times bigger than vista. Did it come on 8 dvds? or a blu-ray disk?
    References :

  3. By Carling on Aug 30, 2009 | Reply

    take my advice
    why don’t you contact mac website support and find out from the experts how to sort this problem out or join a mac user support group…

    85% of people on here have not got a clue what to do with a normal PC let alone a Mac..
    References :

  4. By Greg S on Aug 30, 2009 | Reply

    I just looked at the System Library on my Mac. (I’ve got 10.5.2, but that shouldn’t make any difference.) Why don’t you take a look in the folders (a pain, I know) and see which ones are bloated? I don’t see that any of them ought to be nearly that large. If you find one that’s out of whack and you’re not sure whether or not you can throw the contents into the trash, then contact Apple support.
    References :

  5. By chad on Aug 30, 2009 | Reply

    From Utilities folder, run the Disk Utility by choosing Disk First Aid tab. You should choose ‘Repair Permissions’. This would repair read-write permissions and fix any problems your Mac might come across. It’s similar to Windows’ Defrag.

    Should the problem remains, try download third-party Utilities like Xupport. It would most likely fix your problem.

    Hope this helps.

    Edit:

    You should also check Desktop, Applications, Movies, Music and Pictures inside your Library folder.

    EDIT 2:

    Since the culprit seems to be PreferencePanes folder, why don’t you just open it to check each one.

    Normally, the library size shouldn’t be even a third of what you’ve got.
    References :

  6. By Chris on Aug 30, 2009 | Reply

    Did you do an "Archive and Upgrade" when you installed Leopard? That simply "compresses" your entire HD into a smaller package and reinstalls Leo over it, then reimports all your media.

    You might need to back up your entire media/program library to an external and do a Clean install of Leopard. You can get some killer QUALIFIED Mac help in the Craigslist.Org Apple Forums. Simply create a user account (they won’t send you anything, I swear) and ask your question there. You will need more specs about your system though:
    What model Mac are you using?
    What processor and how much RAM do you have?
    Are you using 10.5 or did you update to 10.5.1 or 10.5.2?

    Ask there and you will get better help. MacNN.Com is good too, but the people at Craigslist.Org are really nice :)

    PS - my PreferencePane folder is only 240MB and I’m using a late ‘07 20" AL iMac 2.4GHz that came with Tiger but has been upgraded to Leopard. Something screwy is going on in your computer…
    References :

  7. By SilverTonguedDevil on Aug 30, 2009 | Reply

    Hey, George. Give us more info and be a bit more specific. For example, how big is "super huge"? The computer always has three or more Library folders. One is inside the System folder and that one has a PreferencePanes folder with only the original Leopard installed stuff. Another is at the root of the hard drive. The main reason why a PreferencePanes folder in the root Library folder would have anything at all in it is if you installed some third party software that uses a preference pane. Take a look at what is in that folder and see if the name of it rings a bell.

    In the user Library folder there should be a PreferencePanes folder only if you installed third party software that uses a preference pane and you chose to make it only available to yourself, not available to all users. Of course, some installers make that decision for you but they shouldn’t. Also in that Library folder is a folder called Mail. How large is the Mail folder? If you save all of your email that folder can get quite large if your friends send you attachments and embedded HTML messages.
    References :

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