Dropbox and Google Drive - Syncing Mac and Pc

Dropbox is a free application that is available of a wide range of desktop and mobile operating systems and is free up to 2GB. This is a brilliant application, it allows you to sync files between your macs. This application is brilliant for people who need up to date documents on several machines.

When you install Dropbox, it creates a folder on your computer and anything added into that folder will automatically synced to the cloud. Any computer that has Dropbox installed on it will always have the exact same files as well as any changes. Which also means if you add something it appears on those computers with that account but also if you delete the file or folder it will be removed from all computers as well.

To get Dropbox visit the website and click download. Once you have it downloaded add it to your application folder. Next you have to set up the application by setting up an account.

TechLabs are experts with Dropbox, if you are having any troubles we are here to assist you. Many of our customers use this fantastic application to help efficiently communicate through their business.  

If Dropbox doesn’t suit you and your business another great application that works just as well as Dropbox is Google Drive. Google Drive is also a file syncing application that uses the cloud. Google Drive has a web interface that provides it’s own suite of online productivity such as Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet.

Visit Google Drive and click download for desktop. Once it has downloaded add the Google Drive application to your applications folder. Using Google Drive requires a Google account or Google domain.

TechLabs provides great support for troubleshooting both applications so if you are having an issue or need to know purchase the best storage give us a call, we’ll be glad to assist you as we are reliable apple support and servicing.

Apple Mac Startup Disk Getting Full

Quite often when we're contacted for Mac Support on a poorly performing machine we generally see 1 or both of 2 things.  A lack of memory for the number of tasks a computer is performing, and the startup disk getting full.  We'll talk a little bit about the startup disk today.

Why should I be worried about this?

When a Mac startup disk is constantly full, the situation needs to be sorted out because this is when errors start to accumulate on the disk.  The drive will be working harder to fill the small nooks and crannies left on the full disk.... and you could imagine when the system needs to write to the disk or modify files during normal processes... if it can't due to space issues you are likely to start accumulating disk errors and inconsistencies.  Another side effect you will notice is constant spinning beach balling.  The system will run much more slowly when it's working harder to perform disk read and write activities.

Check your Mac's free space

There are a few things you can do to create some more free space on your disk.  First let's determine how much free space you have.  

1. Find your Mac startup disk in Finder
2. Right click on it or select it and press "Command-I" keyboard combination.
3. Look at the free space from the Get Info window.

Get Info Macintosh HD

I've always worked on a rule that your Mac's hard disk should have about 20% free space or more.  This will allow the disk to work with large file happily and avoid working too hard.

What can I do to free up some space on my Mac?

This might prove to be a much easier issue to tackle than you think with a couple of easy things you can do.

Empty the Trash

We are often deleting files from our Mac, but if we don't remember to empty the Trash deleting files makes no difference to our free disk space.

Archive unused files

Files you no longer use from day to day can be copied to a DVD, or external USB drive for storage and possible recovery later on.  Be sure to delete the files from your Mac system and empty the Trash when you are happy the files are now safely on the external media.

Move pictures or music and video files to another disk

The greatest space burglars on our Apple devices are pictures, music, movies, and TV shows.  Delete your movies you no longer use... these consume Gigabytes of data and may make all the difference.  If you've purchased them from the iTunes store and you want to download them later you can.  Your iTunes library and iPhoto or pictures can be located on an external drive also.

Delete unused applications

Applications these days can take up an awful amount of space on your Mac computer.  Look at applications like iMovie, iDVD and Garage Band that contain Gigs of data you may never use.

Upgrade your hard drive

You could always put a larger drive in your Mac.  This requires careful work to backup the current data and install the new disk with a clone of the original disk... or at least all of your data.  We supply hard disk upgrade services so please contact us if we can assist you with this.

Summary

It's very easy these days to fill your Mac system's hard disk.  Especially with faster internet connectivity and our desire for music, and movies.  A few simple steps can be taken to look after our Mac's hard disk, and keep it from becoming full and degrading performance.  Your Mac will thank you for it.