Mail on external hard drive.

Question

Is it possible for me to have my "Mail" folder located on an external hard drive so that it can be the same regardless of which of my Macs is plugged into it?

Answer 1

You may be able to accomplish what you want using UNIX symbolic links (symlinks):
1. Quit Mail.
2. Move the Mail folder from ~/Library/ to anywhere you wish, say to the root level of a disk called "External HD" (i.e. the path to the Mail folder would be "/Volumes/External HD/Mail")
3. Make sure the Mail folder is no longer in ~/Library/. If it's still there, and you don't want to delete it yet, just move it to the Desktop.
4. Open /Applications/Utilites/Terminal, type the following command and press <Return> (you can copy the command from this post, paste it in a text editor, edit the path there, copy it again, and paste it in Terminal):
ln -s "/Volumes/External HD/Mail" ~/Library/
This should put in ~/Library/ a symbolic link that points to /Volumes/External HD/Mail. Alternatively, a 3rd party utility can be used to create the symbolic link instead of using Terminal.
This will work as long as the volume is mounted and the path to the actual Mail folder doesn't change. If the path to the folder changes (because either the disk is renamed or the folder is moved, for example), just quit Mail if it's running, get rid of the symlink in ~/Library/, and create it again using the new path.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user's home folder.