[X-Newbies] empty folders

[Steven Rogers]

On Nov 22, 2005, at 2:34 PM, Lawrence Klinger wrote:

>> I recently upgraded to 10.3.9 and found that it runs about a half- 
>> step slower than Puma. Looking for some blot, I ran Spring  
>> Cleaning and found over 4oo empty folders, mostly in my Users.   
>> Where in the whorld
>> did these come from?  How were they created? As they are empty, I  
>> presume that it's safe to delete them.
>> Observations?
> I would go very cautiously with the Spring Cleaning deletion of  
> folders. When I bought SC a few years back, I ran the file  
> duplication feature and it came up with scads of files for possible  
> deletion.  When I inquired about
> this with fellow Mac users I was cautioned that some innocuous  
> looking empty file folders may in fact be tied in, in some way,  
> with  various software programs in your system.  Deleting the  
> folders could inadvertently
> cause you all kinds of problems.

The path should give a clue what the folders are about. Both iTunes  
and iPhoto can have empty folders, depending on what you've been  
doing. But in a world of gigabyte drives, the space taken up by 400  
folders doesn't amount to anything. Also, getting rid of them is not  
going to do a thing towards speeding up your system.

The general rule of thumb for managing Windows (i.e. constant  
management and clean-up of files, registry cleaning, etc) just  
doesn't apply to unixy systems. If you're just running ordinary  
programs, you can just leave it alone for years and nothing bad is  
going to happen. Installing and uninstalling programs doesn't  
(generally) slow down your system or cause a permanent build up of crap.

SR