M1 Mac mini moving Home folder to external drive issue

[86Dylan86]

Has anyone tried moving their home folder onto an external drive with their m1 macs?

I went through the steps of copying the home folder onto my lacie usb drive and then changed the settings in the user profile to the new source home folder. After restarting the external drive no longer shows up and things were acting strangely with the finder, I was able to revert back thankfully.

Curious if this is M1 specific, possibly in regards to the integration of everything.

 

[Zazoh]

It may be with the tight SoC integration, this will be harder to accomplish. There is another thread discussing external booting and only a few have been able to accomplish with Thunderbolt SSD.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Has anyone tried moving their home folder onto an external drive with their m1 macs?

I went through the steps of copying the home folder onto my lacie usb drive and then changed the settings in the user profile to the new source home folder. After restarting the external drive no longer shows up and things were acting strangely with the finder, I was able to revert back thankfully.

Curious if this is M1 specific, possibly in regards to the integration of everything.

I, too, wanted to move user stuff to my external thunderbolt 3 SSD, but I felt that moving the entire user folder would a dangerous thing to do. What if the external drive fails or some issue like that? You can no longer log into the Mac because the user account is missing? Instead, I just wanted to move some of the folders that could contain large amounts of data (photos, music, etc.) to the external.

But I have not had luck with that, either, as Symbolic Links no longer work in Big Sur I read.

If anyone has an idea how to do that, I'm all ears.

 

[86Dylan86]

I, too, wanted to move user stuff to my external thunderbolt 3 SSD, but I felt that moving the entire user folder would a dangerous thing to do. What if the external drive fails or some issue like that? You can no longer log into the Mac because the user account is missing? Instead, I just wanted to move some of the folders that could contain large amounts of data (photos, music, etc.) to the external.

But I have not had luck with that, either, as Symbolic Links no longer work in Big Sur I read.

If anyone has an idea how to do that, I'm all ears.

Everything was pretty unresponsive when I restarted after the change, was able to change the path by luck.

Yes good point on the recovery issue, if one was able to move the home folder a user account with access to the files could be moved onto the external drive incase a recovery is needed. For now i just set my defaults for saving files to mimic that of my home folder but on the external drive.

 

[haralds]

I would recommend NOT to move the whole Home Folder. It is too easy to end in a situation where you cannot start (FileVault2 implications or log in.
If you want to move some big folders like media to another drive, I would use symbolic links or Alias. For music on my Mac Pro the Library is on the system disk but media is on its own drive, same for movies & videos.
I would not move any Caches or Containers from ~/Library due to the performance impact.

 

[Gr1f]

Hi all,
So as I cheap'd out (read: couldn't bring myself to pay Apple €450 for an extra 750GBs!!!!) on the shipped SSD on a 2019 MP I find myself with only 100GBs left after Creative Cloud and a couple of other apps being installed. This isn't going to bode well!

So I have extra NVMe storage in it now and I too was looking at ways to move some of the core folders to the other SSD.

Ideally: Applications, Documents, Downloads, Movies, Pictures and Music.

If there is any solution to this I'd be very grateful if someone could share.

I guess, I could just install the OS on the PCIe/NVMe SSD instead if it's going to be a hassle to do this.

 

[Bigpearl]

I would recommend NOT to move the whole Home Folder. It is too easy to end in a situation where you cannot start (FileVault2 implications or log in.
If you want to move some big folders like media to another drive, I would use symbolic links or Alias. For music on my Mac Pro the Library is on the system disk but media is on its own drive, same for movies & videos.
I would not move any Caches or Containers from ~/Library due to the performance impact.

How did you accomplish this I’m trying to put my media on external

 

[iDave]

For 10 years or more I've located my home folder on an external drive and it worked perfectly with every Mac — until — my new M1 iMac. Now I'm having trouble with preferences not staying set and app icons placed in the dock not remaining there after restart. I'm also having trouble getting it to recognize my iPhone. Most everything else seems to work as normal and I like the new iMac a lot. I'm waiting for a call back from Apple support to discuss my issues further.

My problems sound similar to the OP's but I haven't had any trouble with the external drive not being recognized.

The way I have always had my Macs configured is to set up a secondary user and its home folder on the internal startup drive for emergencies. But my everyday home folder is on an external SSD containing all of my documents, music, photos, movies, library, etc. It has worked perfectly that way for 10+ years. I'm not sure if the Apple silicon is now somehow a problem but if it is I may find myself returning my new iMac.

 

[Fishrrman]

Leave the home folder where it is (on the internal drive).

If "things inside" your home folder are getting "too large" -- such as a music library or a Photos library, etc. -- you can move THEM (and ONLY them) to an external drive, and then set the app (to which they belong) to look for them there.

Example:
To select a different library (such as one that's been "moved") for Photos, hold down the option key as you launch Photos, and it will ask which library you want to use.

You can also create your own folders elsewhere (completely independent of anything in the home folder) and use them for personal storage.

I've been doing this since I started using OS X in 2004.
My home folders have never contained much of anything at all...

 

[iDave]

Leave the home folder where it is (on the internal drive).

If "things inside" your home folder are getting "too large" -- such as a music library or a Photos library, etc. -- you can move THEM (and ONLY them) to an external drive, and then set the app (to which they belong) to look for them there.

Example:
To select a different library (such as one that's been "moved") for Photos, hold down the option key as you launch Photos, and it will ask which library you want to use.

You can also create your own folders elsewhere (completely independent of anything in the home folder) and use them for personal storage.

I've been doing this since I started using OS X in 2004.
My home folders have never contained much of anything at all...

Apparently you're right and I need to change my ways. Though my method has worked for some 15 years on three or four different Macs (and it made backups really easy) Apple silicon has made it impossible for the home folder to reside on an external drive.

Two Apple technicians couldn't really confirm the M1 was to blame but they did say my configuration was very unusual; so unusual that they were baffled by the many issues I've been having. Thanks for the tips! Now on to trying to fix my mess. I've erased the internal drive and started from scratch.

 

[Waltagon]

I have just made this mistake on a new Mini M1. I'm guessing reinstalling the OS will but back to normal?

edit: created a new admin account and switched the home folder back to default. All resolved.