Move "Music", "Movies", etc. from SSD to HDD!

[Fallinangel]

Hi,

My new SSD-equipped iMac will be delivered sometime next week. Since the capacity of affordable SSDs is still pretty limited I need to move the following folders from my user directory to the mechanical HDD:

• Documents
• Downloads
• Movies
• Music
• Pictures

In order to ensure a great performance, I really want to keep the other folders (i.e.: Applications, Desktop, Library, etc.) on the SSD.
However, that means I can't use the advanced OS X feature to move the entire user directory to the HDD.

Any suggestions?

I'm somewhat obsessed with digital cleanliness, and I'd really want to be able to use the folder structure intended by Apple in the "home directory".

 

[Makosuke]

I don't personally see the issue with just creating folders called "Pictures", "Movies", etc on your media drive (that's exactly what I did with my SSD), but what you want to do should be easily accomplished using more or less the same techniques as moving the whole user folder. In the simplest form, just replace the "Movies" folder with an alias to a "Movies" folder on your media drive.

For something that will work more transparently in Terminal, use a symlink, as in the command "ln -s [path to Movies folder on media drive] Movies" executed from your home folder after deleting the existing Movies folder there. You could also use the utility SymbolicLinker, though I've never tried that. Symlinks, if you're not familiar, behave pretty much the same as aliases in the finder, but in Terminal allow you to treat commands as if the linked folder existed where the symbolic link does in terms of paths.