Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Newbie: Use "Home Folder" or not?

A

ArthurDaley

macrumors regular
Original poster
On the PC which I've decided to leave in favour of a MBP, you have the "My Documents", "My Photos" etc on the C drive. On the PC (XP) I avoid using these folders as they achieve next to nothing except causing burying of your stuff which makes it more awkward to backup your stuff, encrypt it Etc. Plus I like to seperate the data (Word docs etc) onto it's own partition away from the programs (i.e. Word). Plus a lot of the viruses etc on the PC automatically gun for the "My x" folders. So I don't use them.

Question is I see on the Mac you have a similar setup - a "Home Folder" with "Documents", "Movies, Music, Pictures." etc. relating to a user. On the Mac (OS X) is there any reason to use these designated folders or should I just do what I did on the PC and keep all my data on a seperate partition?

Thanks in advance
 
I don't use "My Computer" on Windows. I do use Documents, Movies, Pictures, etc. folders on my Mac. I found it was easier to use the Mac's default folders, and they fit my style well enough. All my personal data is organized into Documents. My images are organized into Pictures, and my movies organized into Movies.

As for backing up -- I see how moving personal files outside of these folders would make them any easier to backup. It certainly works well with Time Machine to have the files in the normal places.

There's no viruses yet for the Mac, so nothing to fear for the time being.

But if it suits you better to put your data on a separate drive / partition I don't see why that would cause any particular problems.
 
On a Mac, I don't really see any reason not to use them. I keep all my files in subfolders in Documents. I never really have to open Pictures or Music, because iTunes and iPhoto organizes your music and pictures for you. I'm just hoping that soon we'll see a new and improved Quicktime with a library similar to iTunes for movies, which will organize my movies, too. 😀
 
ArthurDaley said:
On the PC which I've decided to leave in favour of a MBP, you have the "My Documents", "My Photos" etc on the C drive. On the PC (XP) I avoid using these folders as they achieve next to nothing except causing burying of your stuff which makes it more awkward to backup your stuff, encrypt it Etc. Plus I like to seperate the data (Word docs etc) onto it's own partition away from the programs (i.e. Word). Plus a lot of the viruses etc on the PC automatically gun for the "My x" folders. So I don't use them.

Question is I see on the Mac you have a similar setup - a "Home Folder" with "Documents", "Movies, Music, Pictures." etc. relating to a user. On the Mac (OS X) is there any reason to use these designated folders or should I just do what I did on the PC and keep all my data on a seperate partition?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

The way Unix does it actually makes it easier to keep all your data on a separate partition, if you so choose. I believe all you have to do is (from another user's Terminal) move all your stuff to the new partition:

cd /
sudo ditto -rsrc /Users /Volumes/volume_name/Users
sudo mv /Users /Users.old

And then make a symbolic link in your root directory:
sudo ln -s /Volumes/volume_name/Users /Users

and you're done!
 
ArthurDaley said:
On the Mac (OS X) is there any reason to use these designated folders or should I just do what I did on the PC and keep all my data on a seperate partition?
Click to expand...

It's more convenient, and some apps default to one of those folders. You can put your stuff wherever you want, but there's no reason to avoid the home folders.

--Eric
 
OK, so I understand the "sudo ln -s /Volumes/Data/Users Users" command creates the sym links to the new location.

But, what is the command if you only want to move one of two/three user accounts to another drive?

Would the following work: "sudo ln -s /Volumes/Data/Users/Test Users/Test"?

KB
 
davidwarren,

I understood from other posts that dragging the specific user's folder onto another drive caused problems. Is that not so?

KB
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back