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Keeping OS & Aps on one drive, and moving the rest else where. HELP!!!

J

Jebaloo

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Hi, New MacPro gleaming in front of me.

One 500GB HD for Aps and OS (and possible some long term, unused file storage)

One 1TB HD for current Data, Photos, Music.

I currently have most of this on the 500GB drive that came with the computer, but now want to move my data onto the other 1TB drive. I'm sure that this is very simple, but I want to be sure that I'm doing it right, so that the OS and Aps know where the files are. Particularly Aperture Ap, and the Aperture library.

This is what I'm thinking of doing , so please correct me if this is wrong:

Go into Current HD, and move the folder 'Users' and put it in the new Second Hard Drive.


That's it.

Will Aperture see my library if it is moved?
 
In my opinion, no.

You will be able to configure the various apps to stream to data stored on external devices, but I would definitely not move the users folder.
 
There must be a standard way of doing this though. I hear so many people saying that they are having a separate hard drive for OS and APS... what do they do with the Users, or Home folder?
 
Jebaloo said:
There must be a standard way of doing this though. I hear so many people saying that they are having a separate hard drive for OS and APS... what do they do with the Users, or Home folder?
Click to expand...

Couldn't you just delete the files in the home folder and replace them with alias' from the other hard drive?
 
there is no need.

If its space you want, its the data that uses this. I have an idea where you are coming from (OS 9?) everything in its right place?

The system needs its central place for access (your system disk) & this needs to be the fastest point of entry. Let it have this & THEN go looking for its food (data). It will be far happier & contented. you never know, it might just purr!
 
I do something similar, I keep all my applications and the OS on my PowerBook's hard drive then save nearly all my documents to an external hard drive. some people may have partitioned their hard drives, so they have the OS on one partition and all their apps on a 2nd partition, this is exactly how I have my Windows machine setup.

I'm about 99% sure if you place your User/Home folder on an external drive that your computer will attempt to boot up but you wont be able to login to your account. its also possible that OS X might be smart enough to recreate your User/Home folder but I'm not sure about this. 10.5 might be smart enough to realize there is no Home folder and just shut itself down or even ask you to locate the Home folder, but I haven't read anything to this effect and this could just be a pipe dream on my part... there might be someone smarter than I am about the User/Home folder being placed on an external drive.... and hopefully they will see this topic and chime in about it 🙂

every external hard drive I have for my Mac requires to OS to be fully loaded and operational before the hard drives even begin to be detected. I know for a fact that you can boot from an external hard drive on most Macs, but again you'd need a full install of the OS on the external hard drive... this would defeat the purpose of even having an internal hard drive. so in the end you probably just going to have to point your applications to save on your external drive, it'll probably be the easiest way to go...
 
callmemike20 said:
Couldn't you just delete the files in the home folder and replace them with alias' from the other hard drive?
Click to expand...

So,

Step 1 - Move 'Users' Folder to new HD

Step 2 - Delete 'Users' Folder from old HD

Step 3 - Create complete Alias of entire 'Users' Folder and place back on Old drive

Would the computer keep the Aliases up to date? Would Aperture see the Alias Aperture Library and be happy to work from that?
 
HengenJL said:
I do something similar, I keep all my applications and the OS on my PowerBook's hard drive then save nearly all my documents to an external hard drive. some people may have partitioned their hard drives, so they have the OS on one partition and all their apps on a 2nd partition, this is exactly how I have my Windows machine setup.

I'm about 99% sure if you place your User/Home folder on an external drive that your computer will attempt to boot up but you wont be able to login to your account. its also possible that OS X might be smart enough to recreate your User/Home folder but I'm not sure about this. 10.5 might be smart enough to realize there is no Home folder and just shut itself down or even ask you to locate the Home folder, but I haven't read anything to this effect and this could just be a pipe dream on my part... there might be someone smarter than I am about the User/Home folder being placed on an external drive.... and hopefully they will see this topic and chime in about it 🙂

every external hard drive I have for my Mac requires to OS to be fully loaded and operational before the hard drives even begin to be detected. I know for a fact that you can boot from an external hard drive on most Macs, but again you'd need a full install of the OS on the external hard drive... this would defeat the purpose of even having an internal hard drive. so in the end you probably just going to have to point your applications to save on your external drive, it'll probably be the easiest way to go...
Click to expand...

Well, I'm dealing with a MacPro, so the Hard Drives are both internal, not external. I have no idea if this makes any difference though.
 
andy.barron said:
there is no need.

If its space you want, its the data that uses this. I have an idea where you are coming from (OS 9?) everything in its right place?

The system needs its central place for access (your system disk) & this needs to be the fastest point of entry. Let it have this & THEN go looking for its food (data). It will be far happier & contented. you never know, it might just purr!
Click to expand...

I'm not really following you. I've always used a laptop and so the whole multiple internal drives thing is very new to me. What I'd like to do is keep my data separate from my OS and Applications for speed and back-up reasons.

With this DATA on a separate drive, I want to be able to go into the Finder, and click on the normal short cuts to Desktop, Pictures, Movies, Documents, etc, but be accessing data that is on a drive different to the main OS drive.
 
Thiol said:
Moving the Users folders used to be very annoying before Leopard, involving symlinks and junk. Now, it is much easier, and actually built in.

http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/02/06/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/

Those instructions are pretty good. My only change would be to use ditto instead of just copying over the folder to make sure you get everything. For example...

sudo ditto -rsrcFork -V /Users /Volumes/<whatever>

Enjoy.
Click to expand...

I'm just reading through this link, thanks. I'll probably tap back in with a query or two in a minute.
 
Thiol you're the man with the knowledge. I think that is my problem solved!

Not sure what you mean by the ditto instruction, is this a terminal command?

After I transfer the files over, I'll check folder sizes to make sure that everything made the trip in tact.
 
Jebaloo said:
I'm not really following you. I've always used a laptop and so the whole multiple internal drives thing is very new to me. What I'd like to do is keep my data separate from my OS and Applications for speed and back-up reasons.

With this DATA on a separate drive, I want to be able to go into the Finder, and click on the normal short cuts to Desktop, Pictures, Movies, Documents, etc, but be accessing data that is on a drive different to the main OS drive.
Click to expand...

Internal/external drives, its irrelevant. Keep your most used data on your fastest drive & archive off to external/internal slower drives. User data info is happiest on the system vol, but its guts can be elsewhere if the drive is fast enough to respond to demand.
 
andy.barron said:
Internal/external drives, its irrelevant. Keep your most used data on your fastest drive & archive off to external/internal slower drives. User data info is happiest on the system vol, but its guts can be elsewhere if the drive is fast enough to respond to demand.
Click to expand...

Thanks Andy. I think we're on the same page since that's basically what I'm trying to do. Just transferring data to a second drive now, and will let you all know how it goes restarting and using the data on my second drive.

Thanks all for the advice. You rock.
 
OK. PROBLEM!

I followed the instructions on the site fine, moved the Home folder (Jem).

Restarted, and it sees it fine. The new home folder icons have changed, and the old home folder icons look like normal files.

no probem.

Just to be sure, I shut down my mac, and started it up again.

Now it won't let me log in!!!

How do I get in there and change the settings?
 
I have another laptop with a firewire cable, if I could do target disk mode (of sorts), and get into the MacPro from another laptop and change the settings?

how would I do this?
 
Ok. So I can access my MacPro's two HD's through Target Disk Mode.

I've checked. Everything is where it should be. I've even copied back the home folder onto the original HD (most of it, minus the music, photos, and movies as that would take hours).

I've restarted, and shut down again. Absolutely no luck.

Is there any way of creating a new user without being able to go into 'Users' in system preferences? If I could do this, I could maybe go in and change the settings for the home folder back to how they were?

Any suggestions? I may even have to call Apple, but lets be honest, they never have a clue, and I'm miles from a genius bar (plus a Mac Pro is heavy).

My fate is in your hands Mac Rumours.
 
So, having been on the phone to Apple, the only thing that they can suggest is going into target disk mode to back everything up, and then doing a system reinstall.

Man, this sucks.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help me avoid this?

Has anyone followed the instructions above with success?
 
This is why I suggested leaving the users alone! (Not what you want to hear sorry).
I am guessing that you do not have root user enabled. Can you boot netinfo manager & enable root for your drive, then boot as this?
 
Thinking about it, just boot from your system disk (restore) & it will give you access to Utilities to set root/admin password. I would also run a permission repair at the same time...
 
Indeed, lessons learnt.

8 hours (and counting) lost, reinstalling everything. I wanted to do it properly this time round.

I'm going to devise some clever strategy of shortcuts in te Finder side bar, to give me the impression that my Users Folder is actually on my second disk with all my data on it. hard to explain, but nothing more harmful than changing a few folder icons and creating some shortcuts will be involved...

Not making that mistake again!

As a side note, I think that the guys that post up these so called perfect solutions should be accountable. I must have looked everywhere to try and contact the guy who wrote the actual instructions for advice, and he is conveniently anonymous - such is the internet.

The frustration is that having rung Apple support, the guy I spoke to said that he knew how to set up a system like I was trying to, moving the Users folder etc, but said that he wouldn't be allowed to tell me how to do it since Apple 'officially' don't recommend such use of the OS.

I think it's a bit crazy, when we all know it speeds things up to have data and os on seperate drives, why apple doesn't devise a simple and flawless option to do so! Anyway, rant over - you can tell that I've spent all day cursing about it!

Thanks for your advice anyway. I'm going to try to do things by the book from now on.
 
No problem I'm sorry things went bad for you.

If any help, I have all of my music, pics & video on external fw800 drives, with the users & system on the internal hd. It keeps the system nice & clean with all my huge data on an every expanding array of striped & misc. disks (hbacking up of course!).

I don't know if this was your overall objective but it works great for me with loads of control on space management..
🙂
 
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