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alen655321

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 9, 2014
9
0
I have an external pegasus drive connected to my mac pro. Obviously the computer is limited in space and I was wondering whether I should move my "user" folder which will include documents, pictures, videos, etc onto the pegasus. That way the 256gb hard drive on the mac pro is dedicated solely for the os and and apps. What do you guys think?
 

djarum69

macrumors member
Jan 24, 2007
30
0
Applications, and the OS to a certain extent get very fussy when they don't find the directories where Apple thinks they should go. This is also something to consider if you ever want to boot the machine without the remote drive attached (either on purpose for troubleshooting or by accident). Rather than simply moving your home directory to the external, consider moving individual directories, like Music to the external drive, and make a symbolic link for the folder where it belongs on the SSD.

Symbolic links are generally more transparent to applications, and are much preferred to Aliases. I use this Symbolic Link Contextual Menu to make symlinks because the Unix command's order of sources and destination always seems backwards to me.
 

hfg

macrumors 68040
Dec 1, 2006
3,621
312
Cedar Rapids, IA. USA
Apple provides a easy and "legal" means to move your home directory to a different drive ... go to SystemPreferences/UsersGroups, unlock the lock, and right-click on your userName selecting "Advanced Options". There you will find a "Home Directory" path that you can change ... no symlinks required and OS updates will not break this change.
 

alen655321

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 9, 2014
9
0
Apple provides a easy and "legal" means to move your home directory to a different drive ... go to SystemPreferences/UsersGroups, unlock the lock, and right-click on your userName selecting "Advanced Options". There you will find a "Home Directory" path that you can change ... no symlinks required and OS updates will not break this change.

So would you say that this is safer, or as safe as using symlinks? I'm looking for which ever method would be a more "official" way of doing things to avoid any sort of conflict.
 

danny_w

macrumors 601
Mar 8, 2005
4,467
300
Cumming, GA
Apple provides a easy and "legal" means to move your home directory to a different drive ... go to SystemPreferences/UsersGroups, unlock the lock, and right-click on your userName selecting "Advanced Options". There you will find a "Home Directory" path that you can change ... no symlinks required and OS updates will not break this change.
Unfortunately some apps like Dropbox don't track these changes like they should. And I had another problem when I tried putting my home folder on an external TB drive; after waking from sleep the computer was unresponsive for a few seconds. I suspect the delay may have been caused by the extra wake-up time required for TB devices but have no proof of that.
 
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