Is this possible

[Azmontana]

Hello all

Longtime lurker first time poster love the forums btw. Just bought my first ever mac couple days ago got a black macbook and I love it.

Ok my problem is I want to move my users folder which holds all my documents, music library etc. to a separate partition on my hard drive.

In windows you just right click on my documents and move the target to whatever you want.

Is this possible on the mac. I found this but it but it does not seem to work for me or am I missing something.

Link (http://www.macusers.com.jm/articles/how-to-move-your-mac-home-directory-to-a-seperate-partition/)

Thanks

[Ludde]

Why would you want to do that? :confused:

[edesignuk]

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071025220746340&query=move%2Bhome%2Bfolder

[richard.mac]

if youre doing this because you think it might make you Mac faster like it would on a Windows PC… then im sorry to say that it wont. from personal experience i would advise against it.

if youre after speed gains and have a heavily fragmented boot drive i would suggest keeping it 10% free and use iDefrag to push and compact all your data block towards the start of the disk (where its faster). ive noticed faster boot and application launch times after this.

ive already tried this and i got no speed gains, iTunes couldnt find my purchased music if i didnt create an alias of my Users folder in Macintosh HD and if i did create an alias i would get errors when repairing permissions for some reason, you cant have have icons for your documents, music etc folders and some apps just dont play nice with this setup.

[edesignuk]

^ Everything plays just fine (everything works, get all your normal icons etc) if you move it properly (not using aliases) following the fairly simple procedure I linked to above.

[richard.mac]

^ oh k thanks. im just scared of doing it again after the horror stories i had.

[Neil321]

^ oh k thanks. im just scared of doing it again after the horror stories i had.

I'm the same as i've always got it into my head that changing the name or moving the user/home folder = :eek:

oh & welcome Azmontana to MR's

[edesignuk]

^ oh k thanks. im just scared of doing it again after the horror stories i had.Fair enough. If you follow the proper procedure it does work perfectly though. I have been running like this from day 1 with my MP.

Stock HD - OS/Apps.
Data HD - Home Drive moved to this.
Backup HD - Backup of Data HD run every night (SuperDuper Smart Update)

This way all my data is backed up (because my home folder sits alone on the 2nd drive), without taking up unnecessary space/time of the OS and apps that can easily just be reinstalled in the event of a failure.

[DaveTheGrey]

This thread remindes me of my first mac purchase 5 years ago. The first thing I wanted to do after receiving it was to find a maintenance ap like symantec blablabla and a virus scanner :rolleyes: "and how can I defrag my system?"
lol :D

[Azmontana]

Hah yeh the reason why I want to do it is if I need to format the mac I'd like all my stuff safe. I guess I'm still thinking like a windows user, the number of times I had to format my computer due to viruses etc. I suppose I don't really need to do it.

Question though how often do you guys format your mac or do you never need to do it?

[someguy]

Question though how often do you guys format your mac or do you never need to do it?
Only when I mess something up by tinkering with things I shouldn't. :D

I recommend using an external hard drive with Time Machine to keep your files safe. Should you ever need to re-install Leopard, you can run the installer and restore the system from any one of the many data backups Time Machine will create on your external drive. It's been a lifesaver for me.

[crees!]

Question though how often do you guys format your mac or do you never need to do it?

I've only done it when new versions of OS X come out. So 10.3, 10.4, 10.5.. and I've only done it because my organization goes to crap. So really, there's technically no reason to reformat for me.