Running an older system with a smaller hard drive? Or maybe an iBook or PowerPC-based Mac mini with 40 GB hard drives that fill up quickly? Here are a few easy steps you can take to slim down your system. Some are obvious to experienced users, some not as obvious.

Note: I am not responsible for any hosed applications, Mac OS X installs, or files. Do this at your own risk. DO NOT EVER, EVER, MESS WITH YOUR OS X INSTALL ITSELF UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! YOU MAY RENDER YOUR COMPUTER UNUSABLE!

Difficulty level is measured in fish sticks. One fish stick means it’s a very simple task to accomplish, five fish sticks mean it’s a job for experts only!

Empty the trash (difficulty level: 1 fish stick)

This is a beginner mistake. If you’re new to the Mac, dragging files to the trash does not--repeat--does not mean they have been deleted. You must “empty” the trash to regain disk space. Don’t worry, it won’t involve hauling garbage bags out to the dumpster:
From the Finder menu, select “Empty Trash”. If you get an alert box, click the “OK button.

Alternately, click and hold (or right-click) the Trash icon in the Dock until a menu appears. Click “Empty Trash” from the menu.

So please, empty the trash. It smells bad and attracts flies after a while.

Oh come on, experienced Mac users, stop laughing! I already told you that some of these would seem obvious to you!

Be smart with installations (2 fish sticks)

Install only what you need when you are installing an operating system or any piece of software. Don’t need the extra printer drivers or Asia text extras? Don’t install them. And once you do install it, delete stuff like read me files if you don’t bother reading them ("I don’t care! I won’t read you!").

Remove excess language files (3.5 fish sticks)

If you know that you don’t read Finnish or Japanese, you can remove the localizations from applications easily. This shouldn’t cause any problems, but it would be a good idea to make a backup first in case you mess up (especially if you’re careless--like me. Ahem.).
1) Select the application and open its Get Info window (File > Get Info or command-I)
2) Click the disclosure triangle next to Languages. Select all the languages you want to delete.
3) Click remove.
You will notice an impressive reduction in size in the applications. For example, Before removing extra languages, iWeb ate up 630 Mb of disk space. After removing all languages except English, it’s down to 109 MB. Safari is normally about 20 MB, but I got it down to 3.9 MB.

Alternately, there are applications out there such as Monolingual which will do the dirty work for you. Be certain to read the Monolingual FAQ before proceeding.

Watch those downloads (1 fish stick)

Take a few minutes and delete disk images and such you downloaded. If you have files download elsewhere than the desktop, those files could accumulate without you realizing it, eating many megabytes of precious disk space.

Clean house (2 fish sticks)

Just as you would clean out your desk periodically, you should clean out your home folder every once in a while. Feel free to delete anything in your Documents, Movies, Music, or Pictures folders you don’t need. Don’t need that PowerPoint presentation you gave six years ago? Trash it. Don’t need that Windows virus the Prince of Uganda sent you even though he guaranteed it would increase your ear lobe size by two inches in seven days or your money back? Trash it. Oh, and drop and give me 20 for downloading an attachment from someone you don’t know!

Harness the power of compressed disk images (3 fish sticks)

For the uninitiated, a disk image is, as Wikipedia puts it, “a computer file containing the complete contents and structure of a data storage medium or device. The term has been generalized to cover any such file, whether taken from an actual physical storage device or not.” Compressed disk images hold potent magic. They will take your documents and squeeze the air out of them, making them suitable for storage. The downside is that documents stored on a compressed disk image can not be edited, so a compressed disk image is best suited for documents you need to keep but won’t ever need to edit again. Here’s how to make them:
1)Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2)In Disk Utility, go to File menu > New… > Disk Image from Folder
3)From the subsequent dialog, choose the folder you would like to create a compressed disk image from.
4) The next dialog will ask you where you want to save the disk image. Toward the bottom of the dialog, there are two pop-up menus. Make sure you have “compressed” selected as the image format. You can set a password if you wish (choose “AES-128 (recommended)” from the “Encryption” pop-up menu). Click “Save.” Disk Utility will happily create your disk image.

These are only a few ways to keep your hard drive free of unnecessary junk. There are many others out there. I strongly suggest checking out Mac OS X Hints if you haven’t already; it is one of the finest Mac OS X resource sites in existence, with hints and tips ranging from braindead simple to hard-core geeky. The various Mac forums are great resources as well.

If you have any hints, please post a comment below.