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Advice needed. Moving the Home Directory to another drive

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Feb 20, 2013
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Motherboard
ASUS p8z77-v
CPU
I7-3770K
Graphics
HD 4000
Mac
  1. MacBook
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
Hi,

I might be wrong but i thought i would have the OS on my SSD and the home folder on the HDD to extend the life of the OS SSD. The aim of this would be to avoid to much (writing) activity on the SSD.
First of all. Is this a good idea?

I always make back-ups of my system using Crabon Copy Cloner in case anything would go wrong with my system (specialy when i try to improve my system and get it fully fonctional).
The home folder being moved to a second drive, would I have to back-up both partitions (OS+Home FOlder) to restore a working OS in case I mess somthing up?

I hope i made myself understandable and clear (with my poor english).
Thanks for replying me how you feel about this.
 
Hi,

Would anyone have an answer for me please?!!!

Thanks
 
Hi,

I might be wrong but i thought i would have the OS on my SSD and the home folder on the HDD to extend the life of the OS SSD. The aim of this would be to avoid to much (writing) activity on the SSD.
First of all. Is this a good idea?

I've had no problems with this setup. I'm running a 64GB system SSD and 2TB HDD.

The home folder being moved to a second drive, would I have to back-up both partitions (OS+Home FOlder) to restore a working OS in case I mess somthing up?

Your system would boot with just the SSD image, but you would have no access to your data, so backing up both is sensible.

I hope i made myself understandable and clear (with my poor english).

Your English is fine. :)
 
At first I would recommend you to leave your administrator account together with the OS on the SSD. (It is not too large.)
Your normal user account's folder can then be copied to your new destination drive.
Thereafter - from within the administrator's account on your SSD - you can change the home folder of your user account towards the copy on your HD. (But only delete your old folder after you reconfirmed everything is copied and working!)

In case of problems you can simply copy your CCC Backup of your system back onto your SSD. Your admin's account will be in place as well as your user's account: The CCC restoration on your SSD will also be linked towards your separated home folder (of course only after that SSD with the replaced user's folder has been copied before...).

But for sure you will have to backup your user's folder separately.

This setup works here on two machines without any problems. But you should be aware of the possibility of loosing the link towards your user's account in certain crash scenarios. This might make it necessary to reestablish the link - but you still have your admin on the SSD to get it straight.

Ups:pinkmouse was faster...
 
I found that moving the entire home folder to another drive and then using "Users & Groups" system prefs to point to it didn't work flawlessly. Some apps wanted the user/Library on the root drive. Complicating things is that the Library folder is made hidden in Mountain Lion. It was also confusing for me to have the desktop on a different drive.

What worked for me was:
Make The user Library folder visible with Terminal app. Not necessary but helpful
Left the Library, Applications and desktop folders on the SSD
Copied all the other user folders (music,movies,pictures,downloads,documents) to a hard drive
Used the Terminal app to make symbolic folders (shortcuts or aliases) on the SSD.

Works flawlessly for me now.

I also made a symbolic folder for User/Library/Application Support/MobileSync so my iphone backups would be stored on the HD.

here's a good resource: http://blog.alutam.com/2012/04/01/optimizing-macos-x-lion-for-ssd/
 
Yes, some programs might cause trouble, especially those who are installed within the applications folder of (the) one user instead globally accessible for all user (e.g. installed from an administrator account).
Strange that some program's installers behave like that. When run from a user's account they ask for an administrator's permission but install for the user only. I have noticed just a few of that kind, but as I had them installed after the switch it didn´t cause any trouble for me.
If something like that occurs reinstalling those programs (from an administrator account) should help.

Some installers give you the choice to install globally or for one user only.
 
Good point on reinstalling—moving the entire home folder would be a cleaner way to do it. I think it was Quark and Extensis Suitcase 4 that gave me fits. But they seem to give me fits anyway. I use many fonts from many clients and Suitcase has been the best with auto activating and managing conflicts...so I don't want to give it up. I think I'll try the reinstall.
 
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