We all have stuff. We have music and letters and pictures and recipes and…. stuff. We have stuff that we’ve had for years. We have stuff that we don’t have a clue as to what it is. We have stuff that has stuff in it. You know… Stuff.

There’s really no such thing as bad stuff, but you have to make sure your computer doesn’t have too much of it. Too much stuff can become a bad thing.

(This article was originally posted in January. It is being reposted as a reminder)

Your computer’s Hard Disk Drive holds all of your stuff and more. It contains the Operating System Software that makes your computer work. It contains your Applications that you use. It contains, well, just about everything. As we are quite capable of constantly adding more and more stuff to our computer, the capacity of our hard drive is a fixed size.

OS X requires a certain amount of available free space to work efficiently. A general rule of thumb is 10% – 15% available free space. For example, if the size of your drive is 120 Gigabytes, your system would require 12 – 18 Gigabytes of free space to function properly. Some would suggest that the 10% – 15% rule is a bit cautious, but if you are getting down that low, you need to at least start considering options.

But how do we know the size of our hard drive, how much space we are using and how much free space is available? Here’s how:

1. Working in the Finder, click on the Hard Drive one time to select it.

2. Go to the File Menu and select Get Info:

3. Now we have the Get Info box open for our Hard Drive. Notice that this particular drive has a formatted capacity of 74.4 Gigabytes. It has 21.87 Gigabytes of Stuff in it, with 52.53 Gigabytes (roughly 70%) of available free space.

Conclusion: Keep an eye on your Hard Drive. If you have a lot of photos or music or both, occasionally check to make sure your Drive has plenty of room available for all of your current and future stuff.