Connect the USB external hard drive directly to your computer. Make an ISO image (an.iso file is an archive disk image of an optical disk) from the Windows XP CD-ROM using your preferred software. Save to your hard drive.

The beautiful thing about Macs, in comparison to Windows, is that apps lack an installation process with files going to different areas of your hard drive. They all stay compiled into one 'App' file.

At the same time, TotalAV works great, and the real-time checks are done in the background, without interfering with your routine. Reviews ultimate antivirus for mac. One of the greatest facts about this beast is that even when it’s running system scans, you can still do your thing.

Taking advantage of this, we can move all of our hefty apps and support files over to an external drive to free up space on the built-in drive, and in short, speed up your system. Choosing an External Drive The best external drives for Mac computers are undoubtably ones.

They're reliable, they're sturdy, and they're fast. Those are three things that are going to come in handy for our use.

The G-Technology G-DRIVE mini (1TB). Image via You have options on external drive sizes, and the size necessary for you directly reflects the amount of space you require for the tasks you complete on your setup. Of course, there are many options for choosing a drive, including a few from. In my case, I chose a 1TB drive. Video exports can pile up quickly when working with HD content, so getting the biggest drive possible for me is a necessity. For lighter users, you may want to save a couple bucks and get a 500GB drive.

And if your Mac supports it, make sure you get USB 3.0 drives, because the speed difference is amazing. Of course, you don't have to stick with a G-DRIVE.

That's just what I use. As long as it's USB 3.0 and has a fast drive speed, you should be good to go.

Moving Over Your Apps Now it's time to move apps over to your new drive and clear off your internal system space. Step 1: Use Finder to Open Applications Folder Go to Finder and open up your applications folder.

Image via Don't panic. All of your apps are fully executable directly off of your external drive. As long as it stays plugged into your Mac, you still have easy access to everything. The difference now is that your hard drive is clean, allowing the disc to read and write less, and reduce search times. File Locations (Not All Apps) Some apps, such as Final Cut Pro X, have set file destinations to auto save files, exports, cache, etc. If you have any apps like this, you must change the file location or it will continue to write files to your hard drive, even if the application runs off of a separate drive.

Step 1: Open Your Program's Preferences Once your program has launched, open its Preferences. This prevents anything else from writing to my hard drive, keeping it clean and optimized. You Can Still Do More. Applications don't have to be your only focus when switching over to an external drive. They usually take up the most memory on a system, but you do have other options to switch over as well, such as music, photos, videos, notes, documents (Pages documents, Word documents, etc.), ebooks, and more. All these things take up space, thus resulting in an inevitable slow down.

But, if we take the right steps, we can figure out ways to prevent it. My Mac still runs like it did day one, and I plan on keeping it that way.

Cover image via Related. RE: my MacBookPro (early 2015) (with 120 GB storage). Trying to free-up hard drive space; moved all Applications possible onto an external hard drive. (Seagate Slim 1 TB) per your instructions! H o w e v e r.. When i go into 'About this Mac>Storage', it tells me i still have 53 GB in Photos, even though i have moved ALL photos off my MacBookPro, and have set options in iCloud to NOT automatically upload into iCloud Library, nor import into Photo Stream, nor to Create iCloud Photo sharing. Is it still storing 'dupe photos' from the cloud onto this hard drive??