Moving Home Folder to External for those getting the 256GB Base Model

[ravinder08]

Watched this video and decided I'd be better off getting the base Mac Mini for £499 (edu discount)
This makes the Mac Mini insane value and will make more sense to upgrade the machine in 5 years to a new one rather than spending almost double the money on rip off internal storage and holding on to the machine for as long as possible to justify the outlay. I'd say 5 years is a good upgrade cycle? I've held on to my iMac late 2012 but feel like it's time to finally upgrade to Apple Silicon

 

[ericwn]

I just move chunks of big data to the external drive and leave my home folder alone. My movie, music and photo archives live externally.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I would just boot off an external completely so there are no limitations/restrictions/confusion on what is where.

iCloud will only work off the internal drive in this setup (as opposed to just booting off the external completely)

 

[mgscheue]

I just move chunks of big data to the external drive and leave my home folder alone. My movie, music and photo archives live externally.

Yeah, I think that'll be my approach.

TB4 drive arrives today.

 

[ravinder08]

I would just boot off an external completely so there are no limitations/restrictions/confusion on what is where.

iCloud will only work off the internal drive in this setup (as opposed to just booting off the external completely)

Good call only question I have about that is will Apple intelligence work if the OS is on an external drive?

 

[turbineseaplane]

Good call only question I have about that is will Apple intelligence work if the OS is on an external drive?

nope!

A feature for some of us 😂

More seriously, some are reporting there is a workaround, but I'm not sure

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Personally I'm not willing to completely move the home folder off. (A) it's not supported, so you might run into trouble getting any assistance from Apple with issues; (b) if the external unexpectedly disconnects it could cause ALL SORTS of trouble; not just photos & media.

But just moving photos & media off, 256 is okay for a lot of people. Just know what you're getting into. For me, my basic use would "Fit" in 256 but not with as much margin as I'd like. If I'd bought a standard M4 I'd have upgraded to 512 (as it turns out I bought M4 Pro, so it came with 512 standard).

 

[ravinder08]

Personally I'm not willing to completely move the home folder off. (A) it's not supported, so you might run into trouble getting any assistance from Apple with issues; (b) if the external unexpectedly disconnects it could cause ALL SORTS of trouble; not just photos & media.

But just moving photos & media off, 256 is okay for a lot of people. Just know what you're getting into. For me, my basic use would "Fit" in 256 but not with as much margin as I'd like. If I'd bought a standard M4 I'd have upgraded to 512 (as it turns out I bought M4 Pro, so it came with 512 standard).

Thank you
Might just get the 512 then and have iTunes and photos on external.

 

[Cubytus]

No way I'd even consider running with less than 512GiB, and that would be extremely tight. Photos, downloads, a good chunk of documents and work media files, images to restore other computers, would have to live externally. Even on 1TiB there's not much room left, and most of my music collection is still iTunes Match-paired and lives in the cloud.

Don't believe anyone who says everything can live in the cloud. That's marketing hype, not reality.

 

[MrGimper]

No way I'd even consider running with less than 512GiB, and that would be extremely tight. Photos, downloads, a good chunk of documents and work media files, images to restore other computers, would have to live externally. Even on 1TiB there's not much room left, and most of my music collection is still iTunes Match-paired and lives in the cloud.

Don't believe anyone who says everything can live in the cloud. That's marketing hype, not reality.

Well said. It's not a silver bullet.

Bizarre that people are complaining about the M4's "slow" 3000 MB/s SSD, yet are happy to pull files down over a much slower internet connection.

 

[Fishrrman]

512gb is "the new 256"...

 

[turbineseaplane]

Don't believe anyone who says everything can live in the cloud. That's marketing hype, not reality.

...and helps with Apple's real goal (even above overcharging for SSD upgrades), to get folks hooked on subscriptions for everything (in this case, iCloud storage)

 

[blufrog]

I'm still debating 24 or 48 GB RAM, but I'm definitely going for 1 TB internal. 512 GB is cutting it too close.

 

[eRondeau]

Heavy user of a "base" M1 Mac Mini (8GB/256GB) since 2020. Applications/Home/Documents/Downloads on internal with 60GB still free. Music/Pictures/Movies on External Thunderbolt; filled a 1TB SSD then upped to 2TB with lots of room still left. Added a USB-3.2 SSD for Time Machine. This set-up worked flawlessly for me for four years. Bought a M4 Mac Mini (16GB/512GB) on Friday and reassigning the drives took a few seconds. All good!

 

[turbineseaplane]

Heavy user of a "base" M1 Mac Mini (8GB/256GB) since 2020. Applications/Home/Documents/Downloads on internal with 60GB still free. Music/Pictures/Movies on External Thunderbolt; filled a 1TB SSD then upped to 2TB with lots of room still left. Added a USB-3.2 SSD for Time Machine. This set-up worked flawlessly for me for four years. Bought a M4 Mac Mini (16GB/512GB) on Friday and reassigning the drives took a few seconds. All good!

That wouldn't work for me as just my iCloud has more than 256gb in it and iCloud can't be on an external

For me, the only option would be booting off the external

I still need to dig up more real world reliability data on that

 

[Gloor]

is this safe approach or is it better to do it manually for big files and keep it the same way as Apple has it?

 

[AlaskaMoose]

I will probably buy a Mini to replace my 27" 2019 iMac use for photo editing, and will set it up with the Home Folder on a fast external SSD as shown in the video. In this case I will opt for more RAM instead of a larger SSD. Will also buy a 27" screen for it. Why? some may ask? Because there isn't a 27" M4 iMac available.

I don't need to use iCloud since I back up all the data to external hard drives, and back-up 2 iPhones, iPad, and the rest to my computers. Anyway, I crammed the RAM slots of the 2019 with Crucial RAM long ago, so I plan to replace the 2TB hard drive with a 2TB SSD once I have the Mini running as told above. I love the iMac's 27" screen

By the way, according to some videos I have been watching recently, the M4 Mini's SSD is not soldered in place. It means that with the right skills one can replace the SSD with a higher capacity one. I guess that I will have to way for the warranty to expire, and then... 😁

 

[Tcubed]

I would just boot off an external completely so there are no limitations/restrictions/confusion on what is where.

iCloud will only work off the internal drive in this setup (as opposed to just booting off the external completely)

Booting from external disables AI! For it to work you must boot for internal, so moving user data and applications to external is a good idea.

 

[nanosour]

For the $9.99 cost of 2 cups of coffee/month, you can let apple optimize your 256GB of internal SSD space and all will be good. I brought 384GB of data from my iMac to my M4 base mini and apple shrunk it down to 110GB on the internal SSD with me choosing files I absolutely want maintained on the internal drive. Everything works flawlessly including my photo library of 40,000 photos/videos. As a bonus everything shows up on our iPhones which is better than the old limit of 2000 photos using photostream.

 

[wavesm]

I have almost 1.5TB photos and docs in iCloud and I bought the Macmini M4 Pro base (512GB SSD). Instead of spending in storage I have decided to upgrade RAM to 48GB and get an external SDD. I got the OWC TB5 with 4TB.

I have installed MacOs in the external file, everything runs perfectly. All iCloud files and photos are now downloaded and syncing without any issue.

Below are the speeds I am getting:

 

[Che Castro]

I have almost 1.5TB photos and docs in iCloud and I bought the Macmini M4 Pro base (512GB SSD). Instead of spending in storage I have decided to upgrade RAM to 48GB and get an external SDD. I got the OWC TB5 with 4TB.

I have installed MacOs in the external file, everything runs perfectly. All iCloud files and photos are now downloaded and syncing without any issue.

Below are the speeds I am getting:

View attachment 2455394

Which Owc Thunderbolt 5?

 

[AlaskaMoose]

I have almost 1.5TB photos and docs in iCloud and I bought the Macmini M4 Pro base (512GB SSD). Instead of spending in storage I have decided to upgrade RAM to 48GB and get an external SDD. I got the OWC TB5 with 4TB.

I have installed MacOs in the external file, everything runs perfectly. All iCloud files and photos are now downloaded and syncing without any issue.

Below are the speeds I am getting:

View attachment 2455394

That makes a lot of sense to me. In my case I don't want to have anything in iCloud nor any remote locations the require Wi-Fi to access. I am not a professional photographer, but take hundreds of photos of various subjects (auroras, wildlife, family and friends, pets, and so on) each year. I backup several terabytes of photos, music, family iPhones, laptops, 2 iPads, and one iMac to external hard drives. My final photo edits go to hared drives, but edits in progress are done in external 2TB SSD's.

Once I decide with M4 Mini I want, the home folder and apps will be on an external 2-4TB SSD. I will opt for greater RAM than internal SSD size.

 

[wavesm]

Which Owc Thunderbolt 5?

This is the model:

OWC Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD

 

[OWC_TAL]

OWC Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt

5 SSD

OWC Envoy Ultra: The Fastest Thunderbolt 5 Portable SSD

Achieve transfer speeds over 6,000MB/s - 2x faster than Thunderbolt 4 or USB4. The perfect drive for M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pro, and M4 Pro Mac mini.

eshop.macsales.com

Batch 1 sold out faster than expected. The next shipment is on its way- hopefully the ETA improves a bit. There might be a few resellers/distributors with limited stock as well.

 

[spaceballl]

Personally I'm not willing to completely move the home folder off. (A) it's not supported, so you might run into trouble getting any assistance from Apple with issues;

Hey what do you mean that it's not supported? It's not like this is a terminal hack. You can literally choose the location of the home folder with a GUI in the newest version of MacOS. That seems about as supported as you can possibly get.