2012 MBP-SSD in, Original HDD in Optical Bay Caddy-Now what?

[Azzin]

Seasons Greetings gurus!

So, as per title, I've put a 240 gig SSD in my Mid 2012 MBP and put the original 750 gig HDD in an optical bay caddy.

Now, my iTunes, iMovie & iPhoto libraries are all on the 750 gig drive and I'd like to keep them there, but this drive was the drive I was using until I put the SSD in so it also has Mountain Lion, profile folders, etc on there too.

All I want to use it as is a simple data storage drive, so what do I need to do now to remove ML etc and just have my music/photo/movie libraries on there?

Also, I use the MBP with a Thunderbolt Display, that has a 1TB USB HDD permanently plugged in the back for Time Machine Backups, can I still use that to back up the laptop in it's "2 drive" configuration, seeing as the total capacity of the 2 drives is less than the USB drive?

Cheers.

 

[niteflyr]

Clone the HDD to the SSD, make sure it boots and functions from SSD, reformat HDD, then move your data files to HDD.

Your ext drive will still work for time machine backups.

Always have a backup!

 

[yusukeaoki]

Copy what ever you need on to your SSD and format the HDD.
It might be easy if you have another external drive to move your stuff in.

 

[Azzin]

Copy what ever you need on to your SSD and format the HDD.
It might be easy if you have another external drive to move your stuff in.

Thanks, but the problem is there's more data on the 750 gig HDD than there is space on the SSD.

I'll do as you suggested and copy it off to a spare drive, format it and copy it back.

 

[davidlv]

You might want to reconsider that plan, it is often very nice to have another boot disk handy in order to run disk repair utilities, Disk Warrior, etc. If you are short of space on the HD in the optibay, OK, but the system only takes up 10-20GB(?) or so.
If it was me, I would leave that disk intact as is, and run Carbon Copy Cloner to selectively backup system, applications, libraries and data files on the SSD to the HD to keep it current, excluding folders that are only present on the HD (have to have the same dir tree, folders on the SSD (source) and uncheck them in the CCC source pane).

 

[Azzin]

Fair point, thanks.

The problem is that the iTunes folder is circa 260 gig and both IMovie and iPhoto have circa 60 gig each in them, so I was hoping to leave them where they are, but point my Home folder at them (I'm new to Macs, sorry if
My terminology is not great).

 

[niteflyr]

You could move the data folders to external drive. Then clone the now reduced Hdd to the SSD, reformat HDD, install OSX on HDD, then copy data folders back to HDD and point iTunes, etc. to the data folders location.