SSD and 2TB Drives - where do people put their data?

[gopherhockey]

I just got a 2011 iMac with the SSD and 2TB drive option. I know that the OS and Apps should run from the SSD, but what I'm curious is what to move to the 2TB drive and how best to do it.

I imagine the user information mostly belongs on the 2TB drive as thats where the bulk of data will be stored. Do people move their entire user directory or create mount points and move things like "Downloads" and "Documents"?

Curious about best practices. What I don't want is confusion not knowing which user directory things are at, and apps that need to save data to default user directories throwing things where I don't want them if I forget to change them.

I've seen a lot of posts and blogs about just moving your whole users drive. Then I've seen others that use symbolic links so you can keep the speed of the SSD for some apps such as iTunes or MIcrosoft User Data (Office 2011). This seems wise, but messy.

 

[farmermac]

Easy


Osx & apps on ssd

Everything else (user folder) on big hard drive.

Main benefit of ssd is booting and opening/closing programs

Loading & copying files off the 2tb will be fine especially since you are not booted off it.

 

[gopherhockey]

From another discussion:

Yes this is what i am suggesting... moving the user directories to the HDD will not take full advantage of the SSD speed. the important user subdirectory is the library this contains lots of small caches and preference files that are used by apps. These files can be read faster and due to their number and size also accessed faster, therefore they should remain on the SSD as it will be a great benefit to general operation (any Mac OS admin who has set up networked user accounts will tell you this about the user directory). generally the library does not take up much space, although some apps do put media resources in there (many people end up moving them out if they are set up with a small fast disk / slow large disk - be it a HDD RAID or SSD).

 

[Jolly Jimmy]

I may be wrong but I doubt there would be any noticable speed difference by keeping the user library folder on the ssd. The files being accessed there are mainly very small indeed, and of course with 2 drives the system can read seperate things on each drive at the same time which improves speed in itself. Just move the whole user folder, nice and clean, and be done with it.