What happens if I move my entire App folder?

TheMonarch

macrumors 65816

Original poster

• Sep 27, 2005

• #1

Would it mess anything up if I move my entire App folder? To say, an external HD? Its taking quite a bit of space on my PB...


I'm not exactly going to do this at the moment, nor will it be for sure. Just like to know my options 🙂




Thanks

 

dogbone

macrumors 68020

• Sep 28, 2005

• #2

Presumably after you get back the space on your HD from moving the app folder to the external drive, you will save new files to this newly created space.

So why not just leave the app folder where it is and save your new files to the extermal drive where you would have put the app folder?

Moving the app folder could cause you teeth to explode.

 

HiRez

macrumors 603

• Sep 28, 2005

• #3

Yes, I don't recommend this. For one thing, software updater utilities (including Apple's own for OS X) will often get tripped up by this and bad things could happen. In general, you don't want to mess with things above your home folder in the directory tree (which /Applications is). I recommend fiding something else to move/delete instead. There's a good chance there's a lot of "pork" sitting around on your drive in various places.

 

I

iEdd

macrumors 68000

• Sep 28, 2005

• #4

Yeah I recommend using omnidisksweeper to search and remove large files you don't want to free up space..
As for moving apps, I'd only recommend doing that with ones you drag from a disk image or a sit file, etc.. The ones that run installers will get messed up by being moved (unless you install them on the external drive in the first place)

 

B

Bear

macrumors G3

• Sep 28, 2005

• #5

Moving /Applications is a bad idea. Too many application updaters expect the application to be there.

Also, if you do that, you now have a less portable laptop since you would be tied to having the external drive connected and powered on to do anything. And if something does wrong, you Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) is now on the external drive.

Find other stuff to clean up. Or if your drive is really that full, maybe replace the disk in the PowerBook.

 

20rogersc

macrumors 65816

• Sep 29, 2005

• #6

You may beable to get round this by moving the app folder to the external hard drive then creating an alias, and put it where it started of. This should allow software update to work as well, but I'm not sure.

::20ROGERSC::

 

caveman_uk

Guest

• Sep 29, 2005

• #7

What happens if I move my entire App folder?

Click to expand...

Bad things....I really wouldn't do it.

I'd suggest that you move something else less critical. Your iTunes folder may be a good place to start.