Tip : Free up some space from your system SSD HD (mac only)

Envato Authors AudioJungle
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Hey All,

Lets face it, We all hates when is happens and we all know how it feels like to end up with a few gigs on our system HD,
Most of us are using 256-500Gb SSD or in some other expensive cases there are also 1TB SSD system HD but you get my point, right?

Since we are all using so many apps that “drinks” up our HD space so fast , I found a nice and easy solution to free up some space which can free up to 50Gb–550GB and more, all that by changing the default location of all those big folders that most of our music apps are creating.

Lets take for example only the apps that most of the time are not giving you the flexibility to control and choose which and where the install default folder would be :

  • Omnisphere: ‘Sage’, ‘Steam’ & “KeyScape” folders (at least 250GB+)
  • Logic Pro (50Gb+)
  • Cubase (40Gb+)
  • Ableton Live (50Gb+)

So what if we could just move all those big folders to a new location? like on an external HD and still make the application think and act like the original folders are still there.

Well for that we will need to install a small FREE app called SymbolicLinker — this is a tiny service that once installed, allows any user to create symbolic links to files inside the Finder. It does this by adding a contextual-menu item to the Finder that generates symbolic links to the selected files.
In order to install it you just need to copy the SymbolicLinker.service into your Service mac folder which located in /System/Library/Services
After installing(Copy) the file you will see a new service called “Make Symbolic Link” under your right click menu.
image

Now, Lets locate the massive folders and free up some space:
For example, Lets go for Spectrasonic folders which are usually huge and located in /Library/Application Support/Spectrasonics/

  1. First you want to copy the original large folder to another HD.
  2. Now, on the new location, Right click on the copied folder and go down to services tab and click ‘Make Symbolic Link’.
  3. Now you created the new Symbolic link shortcut for the large folder
  4. Go back to the original folder and paste the Symbolic link.
  5. Delete the original folder.
  6. Rename the Symbolic link to the same name as the original folder(Just delete the word ‘symlink’ from the shortcut
  7. Repeat that for ‘Steam’ and ‘Sage’ folders
    8.Now your Spectrasonic folder should looks like this:
    image
    (Both ‘Steam’ & ‘Sage’ folders are now acts like a Symbolic links)

9.Open Omnisphere and you done.
Enjoy.

1 Like
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Is this different from just creating an alias without SymbolicLinker?

1 Like
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Yes of course, aliases don’t contain the full path and content witch applications need, so you must use symbolic links for that.

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Can you explain further? Just trying to make sense of the exact difference. I mean, a regular alias has worked fine before.

From what I can see a symbolic link is just the path name (there is no “content”) that will break if you move the source folder. An alias will still work if you move the source folder.

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In theory they pretty much do the same but only on the user side in a regular and simple use (as for copying alias into the desktop etc… but for app its works deferentially, give it a try and you will see that if you are trying to move for example Omnisphere folder into another location and use a regular alias, the Omnisphere will not recognise the full content for that new path…