Move iCloud Drive by moving Home directory location - any experiences?

[MacBookUser16]

Hi there. So my setup is that I have a MacBook with a smaller SSD and a large HDD in the optical drive bay. As per default my Home directory is currently residing on my internal SSD where also the OS is located. So far so good. However, I keep most of my files on iCloud Drive (backed up by TM, not to worry), which is filling up my SSD quite a lot. Because of this I have been forced to move my Photos library to the HDD, which is not exactly ideal performance-wise.

To my knowledge it is not possible (in a stable way) to move the location of the iCloud Drive by itself. Therefore it hit me that I could move the location of the Home directory to the HDD, which would presumably include the iCloud Drive which is located in the personal Library folder. This would free up space internally on the SSD for my Photos library, and I don't need SSD-speeds for my documents anyway. Does anyone have any experiences with this? Is the inclusion of iCD in this "move" anything to worry about? Could there be any trouble with iCloud syncing in the midst of this transfer or after?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[MacBookUser16]

Anyone?

 

[Gav2k]

This has been looked at many times and I'm 99.9% sure it just can't be done due to the nature of the drive it really messes your system up separating it

 

[MacBookUser16]

Hmm okay... But why should it make a difference what drive the Home folder resides in? If I log out of iCloud before I move it and then logs in after the move is done, perhaps that will make things easier for the system?

 

[MacBookUser16]

If anyone is searching for an answer to the same problem: I tried this out recently and everything works just fine! My Home folder, including the iCloud Drive, is located on the HDD while the system, applications and my Photos library is located on the SSD. No issues and a clear improvement in speed for Photos

 

[KALLT]

I don’t see why it would not work. OS X supports network servers after all. The only thing you have to pay attention to is that the mount path of your HDD partition with the home directory is stable. You can configure a fixed mount path in /etc/fstab with the vifs command, if necessary. Photos seems to have a self-contained library anyway.

 

[emilius]

If anyone is searching for an answer to the same problem: I tried this out recently and everything works just fine! My Home folder, including the iCloud Drive, is located on the HDD while the system, applications and my Photos library is located on the SSD. No issues and a clear improvement in speed for Photos

So the question is, does it still work? With macOS Sierra?

 

[MacBookUser16]

I currently have this setup with Sierra, so yes it does still work

Not sure about High Sierra, though, since I haven't installed any betas, but I don't see what would have changed there to make this not work.

Probably wise to do a system reinstall between updating the OS

 

[emilius]

I currently have this setup with Sierra, so yes it does still work

Not sure about High Sierra, though, since I haven't installed any betas, but I don't see what would have changed there to make this not work.

Probably wise to do a system reinstall between updating the OS

Nice. Thanks for the answer. And now....how do I move the home folder to my "external" hdd? I have the exact same setup as you with a new SSD and an old HDD.

 

[MacBookUser16]

Sorry for the very late reply, here is a quick guide: http://osxdaily.com/2010/02/16/move-your-home-directory-to-another-location/

It's basically just a setting in System Preferences. Remember to backup everything first, though.