Thanks so much for all the great answers. Both upper-level AppleCare specialists I spoke with told me the only solution would be to do a clean install and bring everything over one item at a time. I'd rather eat worms. Thanks to all your answers I now have hope. I'm going through your suggestions one at a time. ?By erasing caches in the Library I've picked up 5 GB of storage, up from 8 MB! It's not much but it enabled me to open some apps. Other apps still crash due to the small amount of storage memory, such as Omnisweep, which I hoped might tell me about my biggest files. Someone suggested Whatsize and Daisy-Disk. I'll try them next. I've installed OnyX, but I don't think I have enough storage for it to run yet.
I've removed and turned off my Time Machine drive and instructed TM to stop making backups. As a result, the System files on my HD have finally stopped growing! So next, Dan, I'm trying to get a list of snapshots on my HD. I think that would be very important. But I've never used Terminal before and I don't speak a word of Unix, so your command isn't working. Here's what happens:
MacBook-Pro:~ tomkirshbaum$ sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots/
Password:
Usage: tmutil listlocalsnapshots <mount_point>
MacBook-Pro:~ tomkirshbaum$?
It looks to me as though Usage is a formatting suggestion, then Terminal reverts to the beginning, inviting me to try again. Yes? But I have no idea what to do with <mount_point>. Can you or someone help me get this command working? That would be a huge positive step. Thanks one and all.
Tom
