Are there any downsides to putting my home folder on an external drive?

[rogercorke]

I have just bought a new M4 MacMini and decided to buy the 256GB version rather than pay Apple's ridiculous prices for internal storage.

I would like to put my home folder on the 2TB external drive I have also bought. I asked another forum - the Apple Support Community - and all of the replies came back suggested I'm risking Apple Armageddon by doing this but not saying why.

 

[ric_d]

I just went through this exact scenario - M4 Mac Mini, 256GB internal drive and 2TB external drive.

Putting the user folder on an external drive works and this is what I did first. The problem is that the external drive with the user folder cannot be encrypted if you are booting the computer as that user, because you will need to be logged in as that user to unlock it.

The workaround is to set up an administrative user on your Mac Mini for the sole purpose of booting the computer and mounting the encrypted external drive. Then you use Fast User Switching to change to your main user. This seemed too clunky for me, so I did not try it. You can see how to do this explained here in a YouTube video.

Because I want the external drive to be encrypted, I ended up setting up my user account on the internal drive and my photos, videos, and music, which are the bulk of my user storage, are on the external drive. The Photos, Apple Music, and Apple TV apps all point to the external drive folders. This setup works for me and I have been happy with it.

I also tried installing MacOS on the external drive and using that as my boot drive. That seemed to work fine and is a choice to consider.

 

[Fishrrman]

Leave the home folder on the internal drive.
Fewer problems that way.

Move "large libraries" (such as movies, music, and pics) to the external drive. Can be done easily.

 

[magbarn]

If you care about iCloud sync and trying to use an external SSD user folder, good luck. I never got it to work consistently after weeks of frustration. I ended up installing macOS on the external as I got tired of the shenanigans. I then got tired of the external drive and purchased a 2tb aliexpress $200 clone drive to install internally.

 

[Manfredo52]

Booting from external drive means Apple AI does not work, they say..

 

[Manfredo52]

Leave the home folder on the internal drive.
Fewer problems that way.

Move "large libraries" (such as movies, music, and pics) to the external drive. Can be done easily.

Can you a short hint re how to move libraries, please ?

thanx

 

[apostolosdt]

I'd say, like the others, don't touch the home folder on your internal drive. However, you can always run the entire macOS from an external drive (SSD, at least).

 

[apostolosdt]

Booting from external drive means Apple AI does not work, they say..

That's quite an interesting, even alarming, remark. Any further info, please?

 

[Manfredo52]

That's quite an interesting, even alarming, remark. Any further info, please?

See here please https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255823903?sortBy=rank

 

[throAU]

If you do move your home folder to an external drive create a backup admin account on the internal drive in case your external drive runs into problems and needs data recovery.

 

[buggz]

Booting from external drive means Apple AI does not work, they say..

I would consider this a bonus.

 

[chrono1081]

In general, no matter what the OS is, it's never a great idea to run your home folder on an external drive, things will always be slower that way. As others stated keep your home folder on the build in drive, and any large libraries you can move off onto external storage (music, movies, etc).

 

[cjsuk]

I'm not sure what all the weird advice is on here. Running your home folder on an external disk is pretty normal. Hell going back 30 years we used to do it on Unix machines and the Mac is a Unix machine. Depicted below the typical SPARCstation tower. Main LX had the system disk in it (200mb on /) and the home directory went on the second box from the top (200mb on / or /usr)

The constraints are of course how good that disk is. So don't buy a crap one. It's the thing that contains everything you do.

I bought a 512 gig M4 mini which is fine for me for the next couple of years but if I need more storage I'll just throw an OWC TB enclosure and 2TB NVMe (probably higher end Samsung / WD on it).

 

[genexx]

I would definitely buy either a bigger base config or a 2tb Internal upgrade disk from AliExpress or such as discussed in this forum also.

To boot from external is also a non critical solution if you have a fast thunderbolt case with an compatible NVME that does run cool as the WD´s do.

There is a script to activate Apple AI and iPhone mirroring + from Kyle-Le at Github.

I have tested booting from my Acasis with WD 770SN at my MBA M2 but do not need it because i have bought the 16GB/1TB/10Core config.

Yes these Configs are expensive but over the years you may buy once and not twice for the same time period.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/im-upgrading-my-parents-from-a-2013-imac-to-a-2024-m4-mac-mini-will-they-really-notice-if-their-home-drive-is-on-a-10gbps-usb-enclosure.2443983/post-33595400

 

[throAU]

I'm not sure what all the weird advice is on here. Running your home folder on an external disk is pretty normal. Hell going back 30 years we used to do it on Unix machines and the Mac is a Unix machine.

Your Unix machine was 30 years ago and times change.

 

[cjsuk]

Your Unix machine was 30 years ago and times change.

The 500 odd Unix machines I have now are the same.

NFS / SAN mounted home / data.

 

[magbarn]

I'm not sure what all the weird advice is on here. Running your home folder on an external disk is pretty normal. Hell going back 30 years we used to do it on Unix machines and the Mac is a Unix machine. Depicted below the typical SPARCstation tower. Main LX had the system disk in it (200mb on /) and the home directory went on the second box from the top (200mb on / or /usr)

View attachment 2492969

The constraints are of course how good that disk is. So don't buy a crap one. It's the thing that contains everything you do.

I bought a 512 gig M4 mini which is fine for me for the next couple of years but if I need more storage I'll just throw an OWC TB enclosure and 2TB NVMe (probably higher end Samsung / WD on it).

Have you gotten an external home folder with internal SSD system disk to work with iCloud sync without any issues? I've tried it multiple ways and I still keep getting iCloud sync issues when using an external SSD as my home folder while still booting off the internal SSD.

 

[bzgnyc2]

I have just bought a new M4 MacMini and decided to buy the 256GB version rather than pay Apple's ridiculous prices for internal storage.

I would like to put my home folder on the 2TB external drive I have also bought. I asked another forum - the Apple Support Community - and all of the replies came back suggested I'm risking Apple Armageddon by doing this but not saying why.

This has been discussed a lot on this site -- among others:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-is-the-difference-between-mac-os-created-users-home-folder-and-one-created-by-user-manually.2445296/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/why-base-mac-mini-users-do-all-sorts-of-things-to-move-their-home-folder-to-an-external-drive.2447364/

I would generally say that if you are doing this to save a few hundred bucks, it's probably not worth it. If like cjsuk and me you think separating user data and the OS is best practice, like your data external, and/or need like 8TB or local storage then it can be done and otherwise work almost as seemlessly.

Potential limitations with iCloud Drive and Apple Intelligence. I have no interest in either of those and if you are planning to use iCloud Drive do you even need more storage? At that point your local drive is more like a cache anyway.

 

[DankeBrutus]

I got the 512GB internal drive in my mini and I agree with @Fishrrman

Leave the home folder on the internal drive.
Fewer problems that way.

Move "large libraries" (such as movies, music, and pics) to the external drive. Can be done easily.

My /home is still on the internal drive but I save basically nothing on it. I do have a NAS that I save most of my stuff, it is set to auto-mount at startup, but I also have a 2TB Thunderbolt 3 drive and a 12TB USB drive for mass storage. I created Music, Photo, Document, and Download folders on the TB drive. You can create new libraries for Music and TV by holding down the Option key while opening the apps. I wasn't able to make an additional Photos library work but I have a relatively small photo library anyway, less than 15GB. I set screenshots to save to the TB drive and changed the download location in Safari to the TB drive as well. Then I added that folder to the dock so it has similar functionality to the regular Downloads directory. Larger apps from the App store also install to the TB drive. So basically the only stuff saved on the internal drive are my Documents from iCloud.

 

[throAU]

The 500 odd Unix machines I have now are the same.

NFS / SAN mounted home / data.

I said times change, I don't know about you. You're stuck in the 1990s it would appear.

 

[cjsuk]

I said times change, I don't know about you. You're stuck in the 1990s it would appear.

It's literally best practice as indicated by the vendor (RedHat). I have to ask if you know what you're even talking about?

 

[ifxf]

I found if you use any Apple apps like Photos or Music, you are setting yourself up for a world of trouble. I had my music on an external drive when Apple switched from ITunes to Music. It took me an entire weekend to get back the functionality I had with ITunes. It stills has the tracks in the IMusic folder while the database is by itself in the Music/ITunes folder.

 

[dotnet]

I moved my home folder to the external drive without issues. The "Mac Sound Solutions" guy on Youtube (see post #2 above) has several videos on how to do it and how to avoid common issues.

 

[cjsuk]

I suspect most problems are people not knowing that you have to change your home directory if you do it rather than just copy the files and hope it'll work.

Which is hilarious considering the point above about doing things like we're stuck in the 1990s, because really it is a problem from the 1970s and hasn't changed much at all. The system needs to know where your stuff is

 

[throAU]

It's literally best practice as indicated by the vendor (RedHat). I have to ask if you know what you're even talking about?

Yeah mate, I was running NFS home directories on a Sun for an internet provider in 1997.


End user computing has different optimal configurations than professionally managed, enterprise unix boxes.

Macs are end user focused, mostly single user machines. By moving the most likely single user account's home directory to external storage you create a dependency on that external drive being connected. People don't typically enable the root account on macOS, hence my advise to create backup account not running home on external storage.

Not sure what happens when you try to log into a Mac with a non-accessible home directory but my bet is "bad things".

If we were discussing enterprise unix servers or Linux machines on a Linux forum you might have a point, but we're discussing Macs, used by Mac owners, on an Apple forum.

Splitting OS and data may be best practice in linux, but ultimately the reason is for data safety/recovery purposes, and on the Mac best practice is to back your stuff up, using either the provided Time Machine, or something else. Splitting the home folder onto a seperate drive just makes that less reliable and more complicated.

Not necessarily saying don't do it if you know what you're doing, but the thread is asking about pitfalls of doing so. They exist, and pretending they don't is disingenuous, given the way MacOS wants to work, and given the audience is not generally a bunch of unix nerds.