Bluetooth transfer drained my hard-drive space...?

Question

I recently got an iMac... I was trying to transfer some files (from a MacBook) using the Bluetooth on the computers. I set it up to send some files, but then cancelled them when I realized how long they would take.

Earlier today, I set it up so that I could send a file (iMovie, about 4Gb) and then left it. When I came back, the MacBook told me that there was only 15MB remaining on the hard-drive and that I should switch to a different hard-drive.

I have no idea what happened at all... Last night when I looked at it, I had 17Gb left, but now I'm down to 428Mb (I emptied my trash can, thinking that maybe the cancelled transfers were seated in there or something).

Does anyone know what happened?

Answer 1

I dono, but first you shouldn't be transferring large files with Bluetooth. Its way too slow. For that you should connect your Macs together with FireWire. Its way faster. If you absolutely have to do it wirelessly, you should at least use Airport.

Second it sounds like you were trying to transfer the iMove project from the iMac to your MacBook. Most likely your MacBook's hard drive is smaller then your iMac's. There is not enough on the MBs hard drive for all that video.

So first you need to stop the Bluetooth transfer. Turn off Bluetooth on one or both machines, if you have to. But get it stopped.

Second, download Disk Inventory X on both your Macs. You may have free up a little space on your MacBooks before you can download it.

http://www.derlien.com/

Then run Disk Inventory X on both Macs. It will show you a map of whats taking all your disk space. It should help you find the duplicate  files so you can carefully delete them.

After you have found and deleted the duplicate files, and your  hard drive space is back to normal. In the future if you need to share large files between your Macs, get an external Firewire hard drive. Large enough size to hold all the files  for both your Macs. Then put your  iMovie projects, and other large files that you need to share on the external drive. That way you can just unplug the Firewire cable from one Mac, and plug it in the other Mac. You won"t need to be  transferring all your files back and forth.

I hope this helps you. Good luck with it.