I think I cleaned my Mac a bit too thoroughly

I bought Washing Machine, having previously used the brilliant CCleaner in Windows. Looking at Washing Machine, I was concerned at how drastic it might be. The system showed I could remove 5GB of duplicated files, which was what I expected. But what a disaster!

I lost 63GB of data including an entire folder of unique business contracts. I restored the missing files with Time Machine, but all my sidebar settings and Smart folders had gone and it took a lot of work getting everything back as I wanted it. Maybe I did something wrong? Chris Dobson

My view is that disk decluttering utilities are generally not worth the trouble. Data is valuable and disk is cheap. Besides, you won’t gain much and you risk catastrophe if you remove something load-bearing. We talk of files ‘clogging up’ a hard disk, as if your data needs adequate ventilation or a full disk somehow constitutes a fire hazard. I almost always end up replacing my Macs before their hard disks become full. On the odd occasion where I suddenly need a huge swathe of empty space for something, I run DaisyDisk (daisydiskapp. com) to see what’s really gobbling up the gigabytes. Usually I end up deleting a folder full of outtakes from a video project, or an MMO game I don’t play any more, not log files or my browser cache. These are small fry, fished from an everreplenishing pond. 5GB of storage is worth about £4. If freeing up that much space will really make any sort of difference to you, just buy a USB stick and archive your old applications, or buy an external hard disk.

If you forget your password, you can always consider creating a new account, as a last resort. The iTunes devices list is the only place you will normally see your iPad appear. The safest and cheapest solution to a full hard disk is usually just to buy...