Prevent SSD wear by moving cache (and more)

[Hack5190]

Since installing a OWC SSD in my G5 it's been life in the fast lane (documented here).

However since a SSD has a limited lifetime with regards to writes I considered ways to limit SSD wear. One solution was to move directories that have frequent writes of (or simply hold) temporary data to a separate hard disk. Because the second HD (in my G5) is a Seagate 698.64 GB with mucho free space it was a logical choice.

IMPORTANT: The below examples contain commands that will delete directories - understand what your doing before using them and always (always) make a backup first!

Replace "[disk-name]" in the below code with the correct hard drive / volume name for your system.

First up was relocation of the Caches directory. In terminal enter:

mkdir /Volumes/[disk-name]/Caches

rm -rf ~/Library/Caches

ln -s /Volumes/[disk-name]/Caches ~/Library/Caches

Another frequent source of changes to the SSD is the Download directory. So I relocated it to the Seagate HD. Again in terminal enter:

mkdir /Volumes/[disk-name]/Downloads

cp -r ~/Downloads /Volumes/[disk-name]/Downloads

rm -rf ~/Downloads

ln -s /Volumes/[disk-name]/Downloads ~/Downloads

Finally I moved my iTunes media directory. Still in terminal enter:

mkdir /Volumes/[disk-name]/iTunes\ Media

cp -r ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media /Volumes/[disk-name]/iTunes\ Media

rm -rf ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media

ln -s /Volumes/[disk-name]/iTunes\ Media ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media

UPDATE: Don't use a secure delete program on your SSD. For more info on why, check the "NOTES" in this posting.