Moving default folders to external drives?

[Jimmy James]

I looking at getting the M1 Mini for multiple users. Rather than paying for 2TB storage I'd rather have 2 accounts set up with most data defaulting to my external drives for each user. Both users would have their own drive that would remain connected.

I'd like to keep the following data (at least) on the external drives - movies, photos, music, documents & downloads. The only things I really want locally on the machine are user accounts & apps. I might add a further 3rd and 4th account using on board storage.

Are there any issues with this setup? Is it feasible? Importantly, will time machine back up each user using data from both local storage and each user's external drive?

 

[OCLP76]

I have this exact setup. It works great but with the difference in that I don’t use time machine; I use a website/app named duplicati. It’s a bit like carbon copy cloner but in the cloud.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
"Rather than paying for 2TB storage I'd rather have 2 accounts set up with most data defaulting to my external drives for each user. Both users would have their own drive that would remain connected."

My advice is to NOT do this.
You will soon run into "permissions hell", if you try to share documents between users.

If you have large libraries of:
- movies
- music
- photos
Then, DO get an external drive to hold them.
But DO NOT create a new user account on another drive (well, you can't really do this anyway, if you create a new user account using system preferences, it goes where your existing account is). There are tricks to moving a home folder to another drive, but I believe you must first create it on the internal drive, then move it afterwards -- don't bother with this!

Instead, do this:
Get an external drive (I recommend an SSD).
If it is to be non bootable, format/erase it to HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).
(I ALWAYS recommend HFS+ for non-booting drives that are to be used for data storage only.)

Now, copy over your existing libraries (such as the iTunes music folder and the Photos library, if you use photos) to the external drive.
You can then "direct" apps like iTunes (I'll guess this works for Apple's Music.app as well), and Photos to use them instead of the libraries on your internal drive (hold down the option key as you launch iTunes, Music, Photos, etc.).

For other folders like documents, just copy the documents folder to the external drive, OR, create NEW folders on it for you various types of data. (examples: "banking", "taxes", etc.)

Again, you DON'T want to use separate accounts, because the Mac is going to "see them" AS "separate accounts" with different owners, and you'll get permissions errors trying to open stuff in one account from the other.

Doing what I suggest above IS NOT difficult.
I've NEVER used the folders inside my home folder for primary storage of anything important.
EVERYTHING is stored elsewhere, on separate drives or partitions.

How I set up my internal drive:
FOUR partitions:
- boot (OS, apps, stripped-down accounts)
- main (all my main data, except for as follows)
- media (photos, videos, etc.)
- music (music, of course)

I move between all of them as I interact with my Mac throughout the day.
Been doing things like this since the 1980's.

 

[Jimmy James]

OP:
"Rather than paying for 2TB storage I'd rather have 2 accounts set up with most data defaulting to my external drives for each user. Both users would have their own drive that would remain connected."

My advice is to NOT do this.
You will soon run into "permissions hell", if you try to share documents between users.

If you have large libraries of:
- movies
- music
- photos
Then, DO get an external drive to hold them.
But DO NOT create a new user account on another drive (well, you can't really do this anyway, if you create a new user account using system preferences, it goes where your existing account is). There are tricks to moving a home folder to another drive, but I believe you must first create it on the internal drive, then move it afterwards -- don't bother with this!

Instead, do this:
Get an external drive (I recommend an SSD).
If it is to be non bootable, format/erase it to HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).
(I ALWAYS recommend HFS+ for non-booting drives that are to be used for data storage only.)

Now, copy over your existing libraries (such as the iTunes music folder and the Photos library, if you use photos) to the external drive.
You can then "direct" apps like iTunes (I'll guess this works for Apple's Music.app as well), and Photos to use them instead of the libraries on your internal drive (hold down the option key as you launch iTunes, Music, Photos, etc.).

For other folders like documents, just copy the documents folder to the external drive, OR, create NEW folders on it for you various types of data. (examples: "banking", "taxes", etc.)

Again, you DON'T want to use separate accounts, because the Mac is going to "see them" AS "separate accounts" with different owners, and you'll get permissions errors trying to open stuff in one account from the other.

Doing what I suggest above IS NOT difficult.
I've NEVER used the folders inside my home folder for primary storage of anything important.
EVERYTHING is stored elsewhere, on separate drives or partitions.

How I set up my internal drive:
FOUR partitions:
- boot (OS, apps, stripped-down accounts)
- main (all my main data, except for as follows)
- media (photos, videos, etc.)
- music (music, of course)

I move between all of them as I interact with my Mac throughout the day.
Been doing things like this since the 1980's.

I think we're saying the same thing. I plan to have multiple user accounts on the Mini with primary storage for each on external drives as you suggest.

Question: Does time machine work with this setup? For example, if I have photos pointed to storage on external drive. Same for other media. Will Time Machine backup up the data both onboard the Mini and on the external drive?

 

[Fishrrman]

I've never used time machine.
I use CarbonCopyCloner (or SuperDuper).

If you store data on both internal and external drives, then I would reckon that each drive should also have ITS OWN backup.

You could take a large backup drive, partition it, and then keep the two backups on separate partitions. I do this myself.

 

[watakoola]

I have an automated TM backup early morning and an automated CCC early-evening. TM is good to retrieve a version of a months-old document. CCC is there for a drama.

 

[IngerMan]

I think we're saying the same thing. I plan to have multiple user accounts on the Mini with primary storage for each on external drives as you suggest.

Question: Does time machine work with this setup? For example, if I have photos pointed to storage on external drive. Same for other media. Will Time Machine backup up the data both onboard the Mini and on the external drive?

Yes Time machine will back up any external drives you select it to. I recently moved my photo library to an external drive then I changed time machine preferences to back this up as well as the internal ssd.

In time machine preferences it will show your external drives and default to ignore any external drives, you just deselect which drive you want to back up. Then if you look at time machine backups you will see it is backing up both drives now.

 

[IngerMan]

I have an automated TM backup early morning and an automated CCC early-evening. TM is good to retrieve a version of a months-old document. CCC is there for a drama.

I preferred TM in previous Mac versions. If I was looking for an old email I deleted, I open Mail and then enter time machine. Mail is displayed with backup dates. Now no matter what, you enter TM and it just shows you the finder window. I was unable to view older backups of email.

 

[georgivelev]

I symlinked the folders in the home directory to an external drive.it worked for me. I hope, though, that my next computer will have 1TB SSD so as to avoid using an external drive.

 

[yellowbunny]

I’ve used symlink for home folders to an external for around 10 years. Zero issues. Currently using them on my 6,1 and before than on 1,1 to one of the other internal drives. It’s as simple as making a short cut.

 

[Jimmy James]

Thank you everyone for the input. It’s been helpful.