Move user folder or just large libraries

Sorry if this has been asked before.
Is it better to move the entire User folder or just the Movies, Pictures, Music and mail libraries (They are the largest ones) from the main SSD to a second bigger SSD and leave the home user with the system?
Thanks

for me and special case with an SSD, leave the minimal ~/Library on the system boot drive
that way it takes advantage of SSD IOs and gets a lot of hits
makes it easy as you always have an admin account with your system when you clone or restore etc
moving or copying the user account - both can be done and work, but I would always even if you do the relocation, leave the minimal amount, which afterall is less than 10GB
Install TRIM Enabler or another patch utility before you clone and repair the drive booted from another system that has TRIM enabled also.
How to relocate system and user data to another drive:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57603361-263/how-to-move-a-home-folder-in-o s-x/
http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4337
To successfully relocate your operating system, user accounts and data from one storage device to another, meet the following conditions:
The destination storage device (SSD drive or hard drive) you are migrating to should be physically located in the same computer. Moving operating system files from one computer to another computer using software not specifically designed for that computer can cause issues due to software, hardware, and firmware version mismatches.
Always back up your storage device with Time Machine or Disk Utility before you start.
Home Folders not on a Startup volume
http://pondini.org/OSX/SetupOther.html

Similar Messages

Best way to move Users folder off the boot drive

I read a couple of old threads regarding this topic, but I have some lingering questions...
I'm awaiting my Mac Pro. I ordered it with one drive. I plan on adding two drives in a RAID 0 array for data (which will be backed up regularly, of course) as soon as I get the Mac.
This is my first Mac, so I've got some questions (long time PC user as well as AIX & Linux user):
1. Is it better to move the entire /Users folder or just selected /Users/<user_name> folders? I'm thinking it's safer to just move selected /Users/<user_name> folders (e.g. my "everyday" accoun'ts home directory, other family members' home folders, and the /Users/Shared folder). That way, in the event that I have a problem with my data drive (a RAID 0 array), I can login as an admin whose home folder is still in the boot drive and I won't have any problems logging in as that user when doing maintenance.
2. Is it safe to move (and delete from the boot drive) the /Users/<user_name>/Library folder? Note that I plan on moving the home folders on a brand new Mac, but will things get messed up if I delete /Users/<user_name> folders from the boot drive once I've moved them to the RAID array?
3. Are there any ill-behaved programs that expect Users to be in the boot drive, so I have to create a /Users/<user_name> soft link that points to the actual folder in the RAID array?
4. I believe I found the steps suggested in Pogue's Mac OS X Missing Manual book (although it's in the context of moving the folder to an external drive). Basically, it entails running:
a. sudo ditto -rsrc "/Users/<user_name>" "/Volumes/<thenewhome>"
b. Then, in Accounts pane of System Preferences under Advanced Options, enter the new Home folder.
c. Reboot and delete the original /Users/<user_name>
Does this sound right? Seems really simple (much easier than in the Windows world).
Thanks.

Just wanted to clarify:
1. Mike Bombich's method entails moving the entire /Users folder to another drive so everyone's home is moved?
2. David Pogue's method (as described in the Missing Manual) only entails moving individual, selected home folders to another drive (and no soft links needed)?
3. It sounds like Pogue's method is preferable anyway (for the paranoid at least), so if the 2nd drive dies or needs maintenance, I can still login as a user whose home folder is in the boot drive?
4. So, if I use Pogue's method, all that is needed are the steps listed in my original post above, and nothing else?
Thanks.

How best to move user folder to a Mac Mini + external drive

I am streamlining my desktop computer setup. Whereas before I was using a PowerMac G5 as my primary desktop computer, I realize I am using my MacBook Pro more often, so in the interests of conserving space, I will be switching over to a Mac Mini connected to my AV system for hosting all my iTunes music, videos, media, photos, etc.
Here is where I need advice. My PowerMac has a lot more media on it than can fit on the internal hard drive of a Mac Mini. I have already secured a 1 TB external drive which will be permanently connected to the Mac Mini, but I am unsure as to how to best go about copying my data to it.
My initial thought was that I could move the iTunes music folder to the external drive using the library consolidation feature, and I could copy my iPhoto library to it, then point the respective applications to the new location. However, I want the external to act as my home folder where the OS looks for all my personal data, including movies, documents, etc.
I know there is a procedure for changing your home folder's location to an external drive, but because of the limited size of the Mac Mini's internal HD, I would like to use migration assistant when I first start using the Mac Mini. Should I hold off on moving the home folder until after I have migrated, or can it be done beforehand?
Anyone have any thoughts or ideas? Thanks!

Thanks for the procedure. It seems very easy, but I am wondering about the consequences depending on when I do it. For example, let's say I first copy my entire home folder to the 1 TB external drive, set up the PowerMac to use it as my home folder, then use migration assistant to import my user accounts, applications, and settings onto the Mac Mini. Will it try to extract the data from the external drive onto the Mac Mini's internal drive? There won't be enough room for everything.
As an alternative, I can move my iTunes library and iPhoto library onto the 1 TB external first, keeping the rest of my user data in its original location. Then it can fit on the Mac Mini, and I can do the migration, then move the home folder to the 1TB external once it's all up and running on the new computer.
Which will work best?
I had heard about people using a single drive as their home folder across multiple computers, but that is not the case for me. My MacBook Pro will become my primary computer, but I intend to keep it clear of media, whereas the MacMini will become my media server for my AV system in my living room. The 1 TB will be constantly connected to the Mac Mini, so there shouldnt be a problem with starting it up once the user folder location has been moved.

HT4889 Migration assistant is showing user folder sizes much larger than in finder

I am migrating my system from a HD to a 256 GB SSD on a mac Pro.
The move is all internal from Bay 1 to Bay 4.
I did a fresh install of Mountain Lion on the SSD.
I now have about 199 Gb free on the SSD.
When I went to use the Migration assistant to move users it shows the user folders to be >300 GB, even though they read as being less than 30 GB when I look at then in the finder.
I already store my iTunes, videos etc in separate folders outside the user folders.
What is going on?
How to I address this?

Probably Time Machine local snapshots. Even if your TM disk isn't connected, local snapshots are created.

Best method to move "previous system-users" to the new user folder

I was doing an Archive and Install of a current 10.5.8 system because of problems with the "usr" folder showing in the root listing of the hd folders while booted from this same hd. I knew that wasn't a good sign.
Anyway, it failed saying that the previous Users could not be moved into the new OS's User folder and they would be placed in the "Previous System" folder.
I have updated the newly installed OS to the latest Apple updates.
Now I'm wondering what is the best method to get the User folders (with lots of data) from the Previous Users folder into the new Users folder so that all the data is recognized.
Thanks in advance!

Just drag contents of the previous Home folder to their respective locations in the new Home folder.
Do not simply drag the entire Home folder into the new /Users/ folder. Just the content of the old Home folder, i.e., Documents, Downloads, etc. The system may prevent you from replacing some folders, so you will need to move the contents of those folders.
Oh, and see this: How to get files from a previous home directory after Archive and Install.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Should the admin/user folder and all of its sub folders be moved to the hdd or just parts of it? (eg. picture, movies, documents) What is the best way to go about doing this. Also should a 2t hdd be partitioned.

iMac with 256ssd and 2t hdd. Should the admin/user folder and all of its sub folders be moved to the hdd or just parts of it? (eg. picture, movies, documents) What is the best way to go about doing this. Also should a 2t hdd be partitioned.

Yes, you can move your user directories to the HD and keep your OSX and Applications on the SSD drive.
Whether you partition your HD or not depends on how much data you have and how you propose to use your HD.
Are you planning to use your iMac as a Time Machine backup volume? If so, partition it off.
Do you have huge data files, eg video, music, photos?
How much of your 2tb drive will be "free" once it is loaded with all your data?
A little more information is required before the optimal configuration can be recommended for your use.

How do I move the /Users folder to another disk

I have a shiny new MacPro, dual proc, with four, one TB hard drives in it, running OS X Server on Mountain Lion. The first disk is the startup drive, the other three are simply empty, partitioned drives.
I am to be the sysadmin for this machine (and a half dozen Macbook Pros) for my organization. I don't want user data to exist on the startup disk on this machine. Right now, the only user that exists is my sysadmin account. I want the three non-startup hard disks to hold the user data. I think that what I want to do is map the /Users folder to one (or all) of the other three hard disks, and get that data off of the startup disk.
How do I change the location of the /Users folder?
Assuming this is possible, or desirable, the next question would be about RAID. I have not created any RAID arrays using disk manager yet (this Mac Pro does not have a RAID card).
Should I first create a concatenated RAID set from the three additional disks? I see no advantage to striped or mirrored sets, I will have a HUGE external drive for TimeMachine, and disk access speed is just fine. But, I think I'd want drives 2, 3, and 4 to act as one big drive. I think the concatenated RAID set is the answer to that.
Thank you,
Jess

How to relocate system and user data to another drive:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4337
http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/
I would only use TimeMachine as an add'l, not primary, or only method for backups.
How to clone your system:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120711_2-MacPro-internal-clone-ba ckup.html
With drives of 2, 3 or 4TB now why use three and the one time I used Apple's concatenate, no I didn't like the way it made use of drives. So I would either stripe or mirror, and maybe not even using Apple Disk Utility.

Home folder got nested, how to move up a level within Users folder

So I went to change my short name from scott1n to scott using https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3872 and let's say it didn't go well. At first when I logged into the account it opened up as if it were a new account. I went back and tried to reverse it but that didn't work. Long story short, some how my User folder got nested into a new user folder that I guess I made during this process. I had to use the Advanced Options in the Users & Groups to point the home folder to the nested folder. This now works and I can get to all my data and such but I don't like how it is nested. It is currently: Users/scott/scott1n. Is there a way to move that up one level without copying everything? Once I do that, I assume I can just point to it again like I did before in the User & Groups setting? Thanks!

So I went to change my short name from scott1n to scott using https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3872 and let's say it didn't go well. At first when I logged into the account it opened up as if it were a new account. I went back and tried to reverse it but that didn't work. Long story short, some how my User folder got nested into a new user folder that I guess I made during this process. I had to use the Advanced Options in the Users & Groups to point the home folder to the nested folder. This now works and I can get to all my data and such but I don't like how it is nested. It is currently: Users/scott/scott1n. Is there a way to move that up one level without copying everything? Once I do that, I assume I can just point to it again like I did before in the User & Groups setting? Thanks!

User folder larger than Macintosh HD

I am trying to merge my user onto an iMac with an existing user. I checked the size of my Time Machine backup and it looked like there was ample room on the target machine. However, when I attempted to move my user using Migration Assistant, I was told that there was not enough space. As it turns out, my user folder is occupying more space than what Macintosh HD reports it is using. I have used both Finder and Disk Utility to confirm this. I have attached screenshots of the finder results for both Macintosh HD and my user folder. I am on OS X Yosemite version 10.10.3, on a 24-inch early 2008 iMac (this is the machine that I will be getting rid of).I've tried the following suggestions, but so far the problem persists:
Starting up in the Recovery partition and repairing Macintosh HD, but it said there was nothing wrong with the disk.
I have repaired disk permissions several times
Run fsck from Single User Mode, all to no avail.
I've manually deleted the .DS_Store files from Macintosh HD and my user folder and then relaunched Finder
I have also attempted to force Spotlight to reindex my entire hard drive
So at this point I'm at a loss to explain the discrepancy in size and don't know of any other options. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I used Disk Utility to repair permissions and this is what I got.
'Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/load_hdi" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources /DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Reso urces/Locum" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner " has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/readconf ig" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/writecon fig" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/authopen" has been modified and will not be repaired.
ACL found but not expected on "System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Sites".
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/OwnerGroupTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
ACL found but not expected on "Users/Shared".
ACL found but not expected on "Users".
ACL found but not expected on "Users/.localized".
ACL found but not expected on "Users/Shared/.localized".
I can't tell what it means cos I'm just a regular user with no Unix knowledge. Anyway, now other computers on my network can't see me as a User, only sees the Shared Folder. Could it be because I upgraded to Leopard ?

How to move data files out of Users folder that is in a small partition?

The small partition (50 GB) also has the System, Applications, Developer and Library folders. I would like to move my Documents, Pictures, etc folders from this small partition to the 200 GB partition, preferably without losing too much performance. Does it work just to physically copy them to the other partition and then delete from the Users folder, or does that create problems? I have read somewhere that this may cause a lot of disk searching delays or other more serious problems. Before I reformat the whole HD to a single partition, is there a faster, less drastic solution? Thanks.

I presume I need to use "file-level" copying to the one-partition drive, but is there anything else to consider?
Yes, if you're talking about CCC, then file level is all you can do copying from the drive you'r booted from, but normally best anyway as the copied files will be unfragmented.
When failures occur, I presume they are due mainly to mechanical failures of the drive mechanism, but do "volume failures" occur very frequently?
Very astute! It's rarely possible to just lose one partition & not others, but if it is HW failure on the HD, then likely all will be lost.
or perhaps to a format that can be read by all platforms (other software needed for that?
Actually, your Intel Mac can boot from an APM partition, you just can't install to it or do Firmware updates from it, but it saved my behind when my only IntelMac died recently & I gad everthing 10.5.8 on an APM Firewire drive, I just plugged it into my eMac & had everything available.
Of course99.9% of PPC Macs can't boot OSX from USB, & cannot run/boot 10.6.x
A few options...
You could format that HDD as Fat32/MS-DOS, but you'd be limited to 4 GB Filesizes.
NTFS-3G Stable Read/Write Driver...
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
MacFUSE: Full Read-Write NTFS for Mac OS X, Among Others...
http://www.osnews.com/story/16930
MacDrive for the PCs... allows them to Read/Write HFS+...
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

How do I move my user folder back to my main drive

A while back, I bought a 265 GB SSD. It was too small to accommodate both the system and my user folder so I moved the user folder to another drive.
Now that SSD prices have come down, I have purchased a larger SSD. I want to add this drive, install Mavericks and then pull my user folder back to it.
What I am thinking I can do, but would like input, is the following:
First, this is a Mac Pro so the old SSD, the new SSD, and HD containing my User Folder are all inside.
1. Install Mavericks on the new SSD and create an account with the same name as the existing one. (This should create a new, relatively empty user folder on the new SSD).
2. Use Advance User settings to point to the current user folder on the HD and reboot.
3. Drag contents of the User folder from the HD into the New user folder on the new SSD.
4. Use Advance User settings to point to the new User folder on the New SSD and reboot.
Does anyone see any problems with this? Any assistance is appreciated.

If you create another user on your new drive, then drag your old user to the Users folder, then create amother user with the same name, then it should ask if you want to use the current folder.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive. I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed. Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.
When I start a backup. Time Machine says "Oldest Backup: None; Latest Backup: None", so it seems like it should do a complete backup, but it only does a partial.

Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:
Time Machine:
          Skip System Files: NO
          Mobile backups: OFF
          Auto backup: YES
          Volumes being backed up:
                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB
          Destinations:
                    Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)
                    Total size: 999.86 GB
                    Total number of backups: 64
                    Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000
                    Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000
                    Size of backup disk: Too small
                              Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)
          Time Machine details may not be accurate.
          All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
          /sbin excluded from backup!
          /usr excluded from backup!
          /System excluded from backup!
          /bin excluded from backup!
          /private excluded from backup!
          /Library excluded from backup!
          /Applications excluded from backup!
Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?
Thanks,
Darcy

My user data ( music, movies, et. al.) take up too much space to fit on my SSD. How do I use the user folder I've copied to my new iMac's hard drive?

As above. I can use Migration Assistant to move my account from my old machine, but the data are far too extensive to fit on the solid state drive. I copied my user folder over to the new hard drive, but how do I access its contents? More accurately, how do I set the folder on the hard drive as my default storage space?

Hello, very good info here...
http://macs.about.com/od/diyguidesprojects/qt/Move-Your-Home-Folder-To-A-New-Loc ation.htm

I just tried to move a folder I had under favorites to an external drive and it disappeared (puff of smoke)

I just tried to move a folder from under favorites (in finder) to an external drive and it disappeared (puff of smoke) - how can I undo this (find it)

Hi..
Not a good idea to move a system folder to an external drive as you have discovered.
Go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar then reselect the box for the folder that disappeared.

HT5622 I just upgraded to a new MacBook and my wife is inheriting my old MacBook Air. How can I change the her MacBook Air to now be fundamentally hers? That is, so the House Icon under Users folder is her name and not mine? Also the default AppleID for p

I just upgraded to a new MacBook and my wife is inheriting my old MacBook Air. How can I change the her MacBook Air to now be fundamentally hers? That is, so the House Icon under Users folder is her name and not mine? Also the default AppleID for purchase stubbernly remains my own.

You do not mention it, but I will assume you are running OS 10.9.1.
Go to: Apple menu / System Preferences / Users & Groups. Click the padlock and enter your password.
Click the + (plus sign) and set up a new account for your wife. You have to enter a bunch of info. And then create the correct Login Options. Automatic login does not require a password from the selected user.
When that is done, verify the account works by restarting the computer and login as your wife.
Make sure that any applications in your own Users folder that will be needed are moved to the Applications folder in your wife's Users folder.
Now go back to Users and Groups, click the padlock and authenticate, select your own account, and hit the - (minus sign). This step cannot be reversed, so you might want to wait a few days before doing it.
When your wife is logged in, the App Store will know.

Move user folder or just large libraries

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