About to fit SSD to take OS & Apps - can I locate my Home folder on another drive?
Hi community.
I am shortly to fit a new SSD (probably 240GB) in the primary bay of my MacBook Pro (17", 2.66GHz i7, mid 2010, model MacBookPro6'1). I'm going to retain the existing 500GB drive and mount it in the optical drive bay for data. I will be installing Mountain Lion as the OS on the SSD to begin with (I may upgrade to Mavericks). I will then be running Boot Camp to partition the SSD (probably 120/120) and install Windows 7 (I am doing this to run Autodesk Revit for a course).
My current drive has some 150GB of space used, 107GB of that in the Users folder. What I want to do is locate all of that data on the drive that will be in the optical drive bay. I assume that's feasible enough? Any reason I shouldn't do it? Any other wisdom to offer?
Thanks in advance.
You can and should.
How to use an SSD with your HDD
If you are going to use an SSD as a boot drive together with your existing HDD as the "data" drive, here's what you can do.
After installing the SSD you will need to partition and format the SSD using Disk Utility. Then, install OS X on the SSD. After OS X has been installed boot from the SSD. Use Startup Disk preferences to set the SSD as the startup volume.
Open Users & Groups preferences. Click on the lock icon and authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on your user account listing in the sidebar and select Advanced Options from the context menu.
You will see a field labeled "Home dir:" At the right end you will see a Change button. Click on it. In the file dialog locate the Home folder now located on the HDD (HDD/Users/account_name/.) Select the folder, click on Open button. Restart the computer as directed.
When the computer boots up it will now be using the Home folder located on the HDD.
Another more technical method involving the Terminal and aliases is discussed in depth here: Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup - Matt Gemmell. This is my preferred approach because I can select which of the Home's folders I want on the HDD and which I don't want. For example, I like to keep the Documents and Library folders on the SSD because I access their content frequently.
Be sure you retain the fully bootable system on your HDD in case you ever need it.
Similar Messages
-
How do I stop applications from coming up when I power up my computer. If this were a Windows system I would be able to take the app out of the start up folder. On the Mac I don't know how.
The app (Excel) is in the dock. When I left click on it there is no check next to open at login.
Lets go back to the beginning when I installed ms office both word and excel were in the dock. then one day excel dissapeared. I put it back in the dock and that is when it started opening during login. There is only one X showing in the dock.
Maybe I have little gremlins. -
So I've grown out of my hard drive and am moving to an SSD. It's only 250 GB while my new NAS will be 10 TB.
Here is my old setup:
Internal HD 750 GB
546.91 GB Home Folder
30.53 GB music folder
91 GB picture folder
335.7 GB movie folder 258 GB of movies and tv shows
External HD’s
650 GB of photos
350 GB of music
New HD Setup
250GB SSD (for applications and system)
2 3TB WD Red HD's
2 2TB WD Drives
I am most worried about migrating my data. My home folder is too large to just throw on the SSD.Hi jgirl,
Thanks for you post, I am really sorry to hear about all the issues you experienced with your install. If you need any help with this please use the 'contact the mods' link in my forum profile under the 'about me' section to send in your details. You can find the link by clicking on my username.
Thanks
Neil
BTCare Community Mod
If we have asked you to email us with your details, please make sure you are logged in to the forum, otherwise you will not be able to see our ‘Contact Us’ link within our profiles.
We are sorry but we are unable to deal with service/account queries via the private message(PM) function so please don't PM your account info, we need to deal with this via our email account :-)
If someone answers your question correctly please let other members know by clicking on ’Mark as Accepted Solution’. -
Apple hi my ipo was stolen today and I had it or 4 to 5 years I jut or new music on it and I didn't sync it to my conputer in a long time so I won't have slot of things please if you can lock it and tell them the their to cally number or activation location for my because I don't have a backup new device that can help me sorry if there are slot of mistakes back connection oh and if you could report in in for me a lock it or what not. Also if you can save my things then delete it from that device so they don't do anything that I can't take back thank you and please help me. Oh and the iPod is a 4th generation iPod if they are trying to sell it with a purple case it crashes alot and I have cloud on it. My personal info and pics are in it and they are probably gonna blakmail me eventhough I don't know them please report this in for me.
If you have a iCloud account set up you may be able to disable it, I'm not entirely sure about the earlier iPods. Even a poor thief will have already changed your settings. You can report it as stolen and change all passwords associated with this iPod to prevent a thief from accessing your accounts, computer, etc. As for the blackmail stuff, be careful what you have on your devices! Nothing is that secure. Good luck.
-
I'm upgrading ssd in mba. How can I save mavericks to reinstall on new drive?
Does existing drive have to be cloned first? Can I put mavericks on a drive by itself and startup from that?
Either way will produce a boot drive. If you clone though, you will also copy all of your user data. Installing just the OSX will not copy your user data.
Cloning can be done via Disk Utility>Restore or using Carbon Copy Cloner (download from the Internet).
Ciao. -
SSD: for OS and apps, or for samples and audio?
I'm thinking about adding a 256 gig solid state drive; I currently have two 1TB drives. I tend to use large sample-based instruments - Play, Ivory, Vienna, Kontakt, Omnisphere, etc. - but not particularly great track counts. If I used it as the startup disk, 256 gigs would be way more than enough (because audio and video files are on other disks.) As a sample disk it would hold my most demanding and most often used libraries.
What would be the most efficient use of that SSD speed - OS and apps, or streaming samples and audio?Thanks for the recommendation on size. I found a great answer to my question about file locations at:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12293000#12293000
Using the advanced Options (control click the active admin account) in the accounts pane in System Preferences, one can specify a new location for the home folder. Very practical and way easier than trying to go into all the app's libraries to tell them where their files are.
Now I can just copy my home folder to the internal drive, and delete it on the SSD. After a restart, this new location will be recognized as the correct home folder. -
Move Mobile Apps Folder To External Drive?
Hi guys,
I've got a MacBook Pro running Lion with all the latest software / updates. This has become my secondary machine (since buying a lovely 27" iMac), and I'm using iTunes Match to keep both the MacBook Pro and iMac's iTunes libraries in sync.
Now that I sync my iPhone and iPad to the iMac, I don't have much need for the Mobile Apps folder on my MacBook Pro. I have a lot of apps, so my Mobile Apps folder is ~50 gigs, and it's suddenly one of the larger items on the MacBook Pro's drive. Would it be possible to relocate this folder to my external drive for the MacBook Pro? I found an older suggestion (to move the Mobile Apps folder, and create a shortcut in the iTunes folder pointing back to me new location), but this didn't work at all.
Is this do-able? As as alternate, can I just delete all the Apps from my MacBook Pro's iTunes library (from within the app) without screwing up the syncing or (via iTunes Match) inadvertantly deleting them all from the iMac as well?
Thanks!How to use an SSD with your HDD
If you are going to use an SSD as a boot drive together with your existing HDD as the "data" drive, here's what you can do.
After installing the SSD you will need to partition and format the SSD using Disk Utility. Then, install OS X on the SSD. After OS X has been installed boot from the SSD. Use Startup Disk preferences to set the SSD as the startup volume.
Open Users & Groups preferences. Click on the lock icon and authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on your user account listing in the sidebar and select Advanced Options from the context menu.
You will see a field labeled "Home dir:" At the right end you will see a Change button. Click on it. In the file dialog locate the Home folder now located on the HDD (HDD/Users/account_name/.) Select the folder, click on Open button. Restart the computer as directed.
When the computer boots up it will now be using the Home folder located on the HDD.
Another more technical method involving the Terminal and aliases is discussed in depth here: Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup - Matt Gemmell. This is my preferred approach because I can select which of the Home's folders I want on the HDD and which I don't want. For example, I like to keep the Documents and Library folders on the SSD because I access their content frequently.
Be sure you retain the fully bootable system on your HDD in case you ever need it. -
Preparing a new SSD to take over as main boot drive
Hi,
I've just installed a new SSD in my 2011 Mac mini, and my aim is to make sure I set it up properly first time around to take over boot duties from the default 500GB HDD. The SSD is currently completely blank, without even a partition scheme.
I ran:
diskutil list
in the Terminal and noticed that the 500GB HDD has 5 partitions:
1: EFI 209.7 MB
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 80.0 GB
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB
4: Apple_HFS Internal Storage 337.8 GB
5: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 81.2 GB
If the SSD is going to take over the main duties of the 500GB HDD, it looks like I'm going to have to endow it with the following partitions:
1: EFI
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD
I'm not sure how to properly go about giving the new SSD the EFI partition or Recovery HD. The main OS I can clone quite easily with Carbon Copy Cloner, however. Can someone advise?
The second thing is that I want to encrypt the new OS partition. I've done this before on another drive, and follow the less-common (though equally supported method) of encrypting the new volume as HFS (Encrypted) before copying the old OS onto it. The main bonus of this on an SSD is that it doesn't interfere with the SSD's drive maintenance routines; copying the OS onto an unencrypted volume and then turning on FileVault 2, on the other hand, does. The other benefit is that I have a unique boot password that takes me to the Login screen, as opposed to using a user's password that then boots me straight into that user's account.
The problem is that I want to use Boot Camp later, but I don't know how that works if the main OS X partition is encrypted. Can the Boot Camp Assistant still shrink the drive and create the Windows partition as needed?
In the end, the plan is to have the following:
SSD:
1: EFI
2: Boot Recovery HD
3: OS X (HFS Encrypted)
4: Windows 7 (NTFS)
HDD:
1: Windows Swap (NTFS)
2: OS X Extra Storage (HFS)
Thanks!I think the easy (maybe only) way to get the recovery partition is to format as a single partition, and install (Mountain) Lion on it.
Here is what I plan to do in a similar situation (MBP in my case), except that I DON'T want to encrypt - I am not sure how that would fit in the plan, but here goes:
1) partition SSD as one partition, GUID partition table;
2) install ML; in the appropriate step of the installation, select "I want to transfer from another mac or hard disk";
3) when prompted, select the internal HD as the source to import from. This will Migrate everything, or maybe just users and documents (I haven't decided yet)
4) use Bootcamp assistant to create the win partition and subsequently install win 7 (this one I probably won't do, but I am not sure)
5) Reformat the HD as desired -
Xcode, how do you take an app from an idea to a data model, data structure, or class structure?
Hey everyone!
I'm a beginner xcoder and computer engineering sophomore and have literally spent every hour of the past few weeks reading as much as I possibly can about becoming a developer.
I've found plenty of documentation, and guides on how to do very specific things in xcode and objective-C but am still looking for more information on one topic; how do you decide which data models/structures/controllers etc to use?
I mean, you personally. I've been looking for a resource on this and have not been able to find one. I just finished Apple's iOS Developers Guide and they mention "choosing a data model" but do not describe them in much detail.
The following is what is provided in the guide:
● Choose a basic approach for your data model:
● Existing data model code—If you already have data model code written in a C-based language, you
can integrate that code directly into your iOS apps. Because iOS apps are written in Objective-C, they
work just fine with code written in other C-based languages. Of course, there is also benefit to writing
an Objective-C wrapper for any non Objective-C code.
● Custom objects data model—A custom object typically combines some simple data (strings, numbers,
dates, URLs, and so on) with the business logic needed to manage that data and ensure its consistency.
Custom objects can store a combination of scalar values and pointers to other objects. For example,
the Foundation framework defines classes for many simple data types and for storing collections of
other objects. These classes make it much easier to define your own custom objects.
● Structured data model—If your data is highly structured—that is, it lends itself to storage in a
database—use Core Data (or SQLite) to store the data. Core Data provides a simple object-oriented
model for managing your structured data. It also provides built-in support for some advanced features
like undo and iCloud. (SQLite files cannot be used in conjunction with iCloud.)
● Decide whether you need support for documents:
The job of a document is to manage your app’s in-memory data model objects and coordinate the storage
of that data in a corresponding file (or set of files) on disk. Documents normally connote files that the user
created but apps can use documents to manage non user facing files too. One big advantage of using
documents is that the UIDocument class makes interacting with iCloud and the local file system much
simpler. For apps that use Core Data to store their content, the UIManagedDocument class provides similar
support.
I suppose my question boils down to, how do you decide which structures to use? If you can provide an example of an app idea and how its implemented that would be very helpful and much appreciated!
For example, to implement the idea of an app which allows users to progress through levels of knowledge of a certain subject and rewarding them with badges and such (this is not an actual app just a whim) how would one model that?
Thanks in advance for all your help!!!SgtChevelle wrote:
how do you decide which structures to use?
Trial and error.
I wish I had a better answer for you, but that pretty much encapsulates it. There is some, but not much, good wisdom out there, but it takes a significant amount of experience to be able to recognize it. The software development community if currently afflicted with a case of copy-and-paste-itis. And the prognosis is poor.
The solution is to be brutal to yourself and others. Focus on what you need and ignore everything else. Remember that other people have their own needs and methods and they might not be applicable to you. Apple, for example, can hire thousands of programmers, set them to coding for six months, pick the best results, and have the end-users spend their own time and monety to test it. If you don't have Apple's resources and power, think twice about adopting Apple's approach. And I am talking from a macro to a micro perspective. Apple's sample and boilerplate code is just junk. Don't assume you can't do better. You can.
Unfortunately, all this takes time and practice. You can read popular books, but never assume that anyone knows more than you do. Maybe they do and maybe they don't. It takes time to figure that out. Just do your best, ignore the naysayers, and doubt other people even more than you doubt yourself. -
Should I Put Disk/Media Cache Folder in Primary SSD with OS and Apps?
Hello, I have a SATA3 SSD with OS and Apps on them, and 2 SATA2 HDDs, one for footages/projects and the other for renders/archive.
I believe putting the disk/media cache in the SSD would boost performance because of the speed, but I heard it can shorten the lifespan of the disk, although I'm not sure by how much.
I guess I could purchase another SSD dedicated for disk cache, but I'd rather not if putting them on the same drive with OS and Apps won't be too much problem.Go ahead and put your caches on the same SSD as your OS and applications.
Most of the concerns about repeated writes causing SSDs to fail are from earlier versions of the technology. Reliability is greatly improved now. Also, there's nothing much lost if your SSD fails and it only has your applications, OS, and caches on it, since you can reinstall your OS and applications rather easily.
You never want to have your irreplaceable assets (like the only copy of your footage) on a disk that you are afraid of failing. -
I have an ssd for my boot disk and keep everything else (including my home dir) on a separate hdd. The only applications I keep on the ssd are the OS X applications (in /Applications) and my own "key" applications (which I place in a separate directory on the ssd).
As I understand it (based on reading since I haven't updated to 10.6.6) downloads from the App store go directly into the /Applications folder. The way I control my system (a) I download all stuff to my ~/Downloads directory, (b) test out the new download to decide whether it has problems and whether I want to keep it, and (c) I decide where I want to put it and whether to get rid of the previous version if the download is an update.
Now of course I have backups so keeping previous versions is always available. But I don't like the idea of this app store stuff downloading directly into /Applications which is my ssd. It's an ssd, an OWC 120GB ssd with the Sandforce controller, but a ssd none the less. So I'm always concerned about needless wear on the ssd.
Comments/Opinions?I was in a simmilar boat as some of you. I had bought a 60GB SSD, but my boot drive was currently using 180GB of data, where should i put all that ****? It wasnt gonna be enough to just move my home folder (althought that would have done most of the job). I looked around online and found symlinks. Think of symlinks as alias's that are way way more powerful. Basicly they make the computer think a given file or folder is on the boot drive, where it should be, but in relaity, its on your secoundary drive. See the link below for more info. Heres the rather short list of files i moved to my secoundary drive, just to give you guys some ideas:
1. Steam games ~60GB
2. Apple dev documentation 1.4 GB
3. GarageBand libraries 1.4 GB
4. iPhone backup files 7.86 GB
5. iTunes lib ~60GB (you can use itunes to move it instead
6. iPhoto lib ~15GB
7. sleepimage file (this is the file that backs up your ram when you put your mac to sleep, its the same size as yoru RAM) 6GB
now my boot drive is a comfortable 40/60 GB, but most of my homefolder (including the system files that you want to be accessed quickly) are on my SSD, but all the big stuff, is safe on my HDD. My symlinks didnt break when i cloned from my HDD to my SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner. All of this is free, and took me under an hour, but save me a boatload by not having to buy a bigger SSD drive.
Hope this answers your questions
http://www.macworld.com/article/153437/2010/08/symlinkservice.html
PS. I have an OWC 60GB 3g drive, it works amazingly fast -
Is there anyway to take a downloaded app from one computer and put it on another without rebuying it. I have a macbook that I bought the new iMovie and iPhoto on, but I would rather it be on my iMac. So is there anyway I can change it? I thought that if I bought it the apps on my macbook, they would be avaliable on my imac like the mobile devices operate. The macbook has 10.6.8 cause its a older model and I think lion would slow it down. Any help??
Just redownload it on the other computer by logging into the App Store with the same Apple ID you used to purchase it.
-
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000186 EndHTML:0000002354 StartFragment:0000001670 EndFragment:0000002318 SourceURL:file:///Users/armandodiaz/Desktop/I%20recently%20installed%20MacK.doc
I recently installed MacKeeper on my iMac. It was a disaster. I lost applications and files. Fortunately I had back up. Worst of all it did something to my system software that it takes about 7 minuts to stat-up. What can I do to get it to start-up faster?
ThanksHow to Remove MacKeeper
Given you have a backup you may want to think about erasing the hard drive and reinstalling Snow Leopard then restore your backup. -
Hİ
My ipad's screen is black. When it take charge, I can hear sound but still black. I press and hold both the sleep and home buttons for about 10 to 15 seconds but this doesn't work. Screen still black! PLS HELP ME!How long did you let it charge? It may take 30 minutes before the iPad responds when the battery is completely drained. Let it charge for at least 30 minute using the wall charger. Then rest the iPad. Press and hold both the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button continuously until the Apple logo appears. Then release the button and let the device restart. You will not lose data doing this. It's like a computer reboot.
If the iPad restarts let it continue to charge until the battery is 100%.
If the iPad still does not start make an appointment at an Apple Store to have your device examined by a technician. Or contact Apple Support. -
How should I go about setting an ssd hdd to my macbook pro
I currently have a macbook air. I am going to get a macbook pro 15 inch and take out the optical drive and put the hdd there and then a samsung 840 pro ssd in the spot for the orginal hdd. What i want to do is first copy my disk from my air to the ssd on the pro. Then i want to put all my media files on to the hdd.
My questions are--
1. How will i get OS X Mt Lion on my ssd? If i just copy over the disk image from my air to it will OS X be there or just the files? Also will the licensing and everything be in tact or will it have touble updating?
2. Is there anything i have to do to make my hdd and ssd work together while im running OS X. That way i can have my media on the hdd and other stuff on the ssd?
I evetually want to also boot camp windows 8 off the hdd.
Ive never done anything like thsi before so I really dont know what to expect. Excuse me for my lack of tech speak and whatnot.nbar
While I don't use the optibay for an extra disk space (I use my SuperDrive for archival purposes and use it weekly) I don't think that the OP will have any problems, particularly with the OWC Data Doubler. Thousands - if not tens of thousands - people have used this method for placing another drive in their MBPs and very, very few people have reported problems (usually when using a cheap caddy/connector).
So while I don't use this method, I can't even begin to dissuade others from doing it.
Clinton
Maybe you are looking for
-
I want to establish multiple accounts on one computer and want to find out if as an admin I can keep track of who's been on the computer and for how long? Is this possible with panther and/or tiger? Thanks.
-
I just got my iPad today and someone else's apple id was on there. I did a quick start restore and it cleared everything that the previous owner had. then after that I did a full restore and everything started to go good. As soon as i got to the acti
-
i want to transfer my music from one computer to another, however a large majority of my songs are already on the new computer, is there a way to transfer only the ones not there? or to see what songs are only on the one computer
-
Batch PDF Create from Powerpoint Files Stops Partway with Errors
When converting several ppt files to pdf using the "Batch Create Multiple Files" command in Adobe Acrobat 9.1.3, the conversion process works properly for the first few documents and then stops, usually with the error "Cannot open document" for all s
-
I downloaded a trial of Adobe Acrobat...didn't buy it. Have Adobe Reader, but the default is now Adobe Acrobat. How do I change it so I can download to/with Adobe Reader?