One Solution: Offload Home Folder Items with Mavericks on SSD

Question

One Solution for offloading home folder items in Mavericks with a small SSD
Like others I wanted to use my SSD as the boot disk because of the speed gain and at the same time knew that its 120 GB capacity would not accommodate my basic 10.9.1 installation AND my 93 GB folder of documents.
Two other factors lead me to seek a solution: 1) When I updated from Mountain Lion to Mavericks my computer became extremely sluggish. 2) I was desperate to find a way to access the hundreds of documents and drawings that I had made in AppleWorks over a period of many years, all of which could not be opened in Mavericks (or Lion or Mountain Lion).
Solution to the second problem was LibreOffice to be found at libreoffice.org. This opensource application is one of the greatest finds in my 30 years of using a Macintosh. So far, I have been able to open every AppleWorks document tried. How it is that Apple with its billions in the bank cannot offer such an application with similar features is beyond my understanding. Don’t forget to support them with a donation.
Solution to problem number one was to back up my one-volume, 1 TB internal hard disk and to erase and reformat the disk using three partitions (volumes). On partition one I installed 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), on partition two I installed 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) and I left partition three blank for any future experiment that might be needed. Although I much prefer to have a single internal hard disk matched by a single external hard disk, I finally concluded that this would be best for now. While I plan to learn LibreOffice, I have thousands of hours working with AppleWorks and can, if necessary, create a drawing in that application without spending a lot of time learning a new feature. Also, keep in mind that a person may resize the volumes on a single disk by using Disk Utility.
Redirecting the user folder is not as easy in Mavericks as it was in Mountain Lion and I did not trust myself to use the Terminal. So I experimented and quickly discovered what appears to be a work-around.
First of all, keep in mind that your home folder contains seven folders, i.e, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Movies, Music, Pictures and Public. For myself, the Desktop and Public folders are never a problem. In using xScan I can instantly view the usage of all my disks and volumes and do not allow Downloads to accumulate. Movies I save to a designated external disk. All my music is accessed by iTunes and I believe that you may move the iTunes library to another volume, then link to it as I will explain in a moment regarding the Document folder. All pictures are maintained in iPhoto and you may link to the appropriate folder and/or file in the same way as iTunes. That leaves me with my 93 GB folder of documents.
I solved this problem simply by opening (⌘-O) a window for both the 10.8.5 volume and the SSD disk. See below:
I then located and clicked on my Documents folder in the 10.8.5 volume and dragged it to the Sidebar of the SSD window. Now when I create a document and want to save it to my Documents Folder, I simply locate the Documents Folder on my 10.8.5 volume in the Save As window. When I wish to work on that particular document again in the future I can do so in one of several ways: 1) If the application is open I can to to File → Open Recent, or I can simply click on the Documents icon in the sidebar of the SSD and I have the view set so that I can quickly view those documents opened by Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 Days, Previous 30 days, etc.
Folders within the Documents Folder, such as Correspondence, can be dragged to the SSD Sidebar in the same manner.
Keep in mind that the side bar for the SSD drive with Mavericks will display a Documents icon that look like two sheets of paper rather than a folder. If having two documents icons confuses you, simply remove the Mavericks Document icon.
Caution: After arranging the above, do NOT eject the volume containing your Documents Folder because that will break your link and you will have to repeat the procedure. If having numerous icons on your desktop bothers you, simply click on the Desktop and go to the Finder Menu and uncheck External disks.
Erasing a disk and arranging a computer as I did requires a lot of time. Also, keep in mind that I did NOT transfer any preference files because I feared that my problems may have been caused by one or more corrupted preference files. So, remember to have a printout of your passwords and the serial numbers before starting. I can only say that I went from a very slow computer to a lightning fast computer.
Admittedly, I may encounter some problem(s) that I have not yet encountered — and I would appreciate any feedback — but so far everything is working like a champ!
I will state that this will probably be the last update that I make on this 27-inch, Mid 2010 iMac. While updates have always proved to have problems, I am not happy with the new Mavericks interface. In my opinion, Apple made a big mistake in firing Scott Forstall. And as you know, a FREE OS may — and did for me — require costly updates.
Any feedback to my suggested solution will be appreciated.

Answer 1

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