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Home folder on External drive

circatee

circatee

Contributor
Original poster
Nov 30, 2014
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3,091
Georgia, USA
My Mac Mini (Intel), has a 128GB drive, and now, there is only 400MB left. Yes, 400MBs!
If I connect an external drive, can I move my entire Home folder, to that drive, and will I be able to log in and such?
Failing that, what recommendations do you have?

I have already removed as much as I can (documents and apps that I do not use)
Thanks
 
Yes, you can place your home folder on an external drive. There are lots of tutorials around on how to do it.

HOWEVER I cannot recommend it, and this is coming from someone who has done it several times. It will work flawlessly for quite a while but eventually something, often a system software update, makes things go awry.

Library files get written in the wrong place, or the OS just decides to change the location of the home folder back to default, or something else. You will lose settings, weird bugs creep in, permissions get messed up, etc.

As an alternative, you can just use an external for your documents, downloads, pictures, etc. Leave your actual home folder on the internal drive.

I'm sure someone will come along to disagree with me and say they keep their home folder on an external with no problems, but in my experience there are always problems eventually.

I'm hardheaded. I've done it several times. It always starts off well, but it never lasts.

That's just my $.02
 
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Darth.Titan said:
Yes, you can place your home folder on an external drive. There are lots of tutorials around on how to do it.

HOWEVER I cannot recommend it, and this is coming from someone who has done it several times. It will work flawlessly for quite a while but eventually something, often a system software update, makes things go awry.

Library files get written in the wrong place, or the OS just decides to change the location of the home folder back to default, or something else. You will lose settings, weird bugs creep in, permissions get messed up, etc.

As an alternative, you can just use an external for your documents, downloads, pictures, etc. Leave your actual home folder on the internal drive.

I'm sure someone will come along to disagree with me and say they keep their home folder on an external with no problems, but in my experience there are always problems eventually.

I'm hardheaded. I've done it several times. It always starts off well, but it never lasts.

That's just my $.02
Click to expand...
...thanks for your feedback. I have been researching, since I posted this thread, and your sentiments are common.
The challenge I face is that the 'System Data' section seems to have a lot of data, almost 80GB. Just weird really.
 
As mentioned, I'd start to look for plain files like in Downloads / Documents / Desktop and then move on to apps with large libraries (like iTunes/Music, Photos, iMovie) as you can safely move these library files to an external drive.
I'd also advise against moving the whole home folder or applications.
And be aware, the less free space you have on your SSD, the sooner it will reach its EOL (as the same few free sectors are used disproportionately often).
 
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I'm going in the other direction:

That is to say, you should NOT move your home folder.
It's best left on the boot drive where Apple places it.
Move it, and all sorts of problems can arise.

Alternative course of action:
Move things that are INSIDE OF your home folder, but leave the home folder "in place".

That is to say, WHAT is eating up your space?
The iTunes folder?
The Photos library?
Some other library?
Stored movies?

These items can be easily moved, the apps that use them can "access them" from anywhere, usually with little-to-no loss in speed.

Another way to do it:
Get a good-sized EXTERNAL SSD (1tb would be good).
Set it up to be your EXTERNAL boot drive.
Now there will be room for everything.
 
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With an Intel Mini, I agree - booting from an external drive would be a good solution. However, I gather this gets harder and harder to do with each new version of MacOS. Bombich still has an option to make a disk bootable in Carbon Copy, but they don't recommend it.

bombich.com

Creating legacy bootable copies of macOS (Big Sur and later) - Bombich Software

bombich.com bombich.com

I ran my 2012 Mini with Sierra on a 1tb external Samsung T3 SSD for a few years and pushed it pretty hard with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro with no problems. Not sure if it would be that smooth on a 2018 Mini with Monterey.

I set the preference to allow my 2018 Mini to boot from an external drive as a precaution but have not tried it. I know that others around here use external boot disks however.
 
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My 2018 Mini boots and runs fine from an external SSD (although I only do that occasionally, for maintenance purposes).

My 2021 MacBook Pro 14" will also boot and run from an external SSD. Of course, not nearly as fast as from the internal SSD, but it can still be done.
 
I ran my 256gb Late 2015 iMac from an external Home SSD for seven years (so far) with no problems. I planned to do the same thing when I bought an m1 Mini last year--but the new complexities and uncertainties made me decide to keep everything on the internal 512gb.
 
Darth.Titan said:
I'm sure someone will come along to disagree with me and say they keep their home folder on an external with no problems, but in my experience there are always problems eventually.
Click to expand...
I keep my home folder on an external with no problems. I tend to use the internal for the OS and applications only. Everything else goes on one or more externals, and those externals are backed up to other drives.

For example, the 2020 iMac I'm writing this on has an external Thunderbolt OWC Envoy SX NVMe that contains the home folder, that is backed up to my Thunderbay 6 enclosure with spinners, which itself it connected to a dual drive dock that I can insert other spinners into for backup that I can carry off-site.
 
rpmurray said:
Because it's not true. The SSD will constantly be moving files around in a process called wear leveling where it tries to even out how often a particular sector is used. Properly written firmware will not hammer any particular area harder than another.
Click to expand...
Just to clarify: I was talking about an SSD that is already almost full (like in OPs case).
The SSD won't move existing files around, that would mean unnecessary wear.
[edit reason: more reading on over-provisioning and wear leveling required on my end]
 
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arw said:
The SSD won't move existing files around, that would mean unnecessary wear.
Click to expand...
I respectfully disagree. From How Wear Leveling Increases SSD Lifetime.

There are three types of wear leveling.

  • Dynamic – Makes sure that data is written only on blocks with the lowest erase count. The downside is that wear leveling is limited only to “hot” or frequently modified areas, so blocks that hold rarely accessed, static data are not included in the pool of free space, thus limiting the number of blocks going through wear leveling.
  • Static – Includes static data or “cold” blocks in the wear leveling process. If a block contains static or rarely accessed data, its write/erase count is low. The data is moved from “cold” blocks to “hot” blocks and the freed-up block is added to the pool of free space for future use. Reassigning static data is a more complex process because it involves multiple operations to move static data around. While more effective at extending flash storage life span, static wear leveling only covers a single flash die.
  • Global – Works like static wear leveling by including both free space and blocks with static data, but the main difference is that its coverage extends to the entire flash storage device.
 
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rpmurray said:
I respectfully disagree. From How Wear Leveling Increases SSD Lifetime.

There are three types of wear leveling.
Click to expand...
I stand corrected. I always got the impression Over-Provisioning and the common recommended 10% is to make up for the absence of Static and Global Wear leveling. But it is indeed apparent in all recent SSDs.
Thank you, I will have to do some reading!
 
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Boyd01 said:
With an Intel Mini, I agree - booting from an external drive would be a good solution. However, I gather this gets harder and harder to do with each new version of MacOS. Bombich still has an option to make a disk bootable in Carbon Copy, but they don't recommend it.

bombich.com

Creating legacy bootable copies of macOS (Big Sur and later) - Bombich Software

bombich.com bombich.com

I ran my 2012 Mini with Sierra on a 1tb external Samsung T3 SSD for a few years and pushed it pretty hard with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro with no problems. Not sure if it would be that smooth on a 2018 Mini with Monterey.

I set the preference to allow my 2018 Mini to boot from an external drive as a precaution but have not tried it. I know that others around here use external boot disks however.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that link, etcetera. I may try this route...
 
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I had no problems with Home folder on external SSD on Monterey. Only the initial start up was a little bit longer. There is an official way to do it, it's a very simple procedure. BTW, it's a good way to extend life for internal SSD in Apple Silicon computers. For example browser cache is located in Home Library, so when you watch Youtube it caches to the external Home folder.
 
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Boyd01 said:
With an Intel Mini, I agree - booting from an external drive would be a good solution. However, I gather this gets harder and harder to do with each new version of MacOS. Bombich still has an option to make a disk bootable in Carbon Copy, but they don't recommend it.
Click to expand...

Well, initially I too had problems with making my external M2 SSD bootable (Mac Mini M1) and also used CCC to clone the whole thing from internal. But as it turned out later, the problem was the Type-C connection during installation, I switched to Type-A and installation went fine, after that I switched back to Type-C port and it works just fine.
 
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