If you are going to migrate data from another Mac I think this is the best way to go about it. Updated! Make a Time Machine copy of your old computer don’t encrypt it on a dedicated drive. Then connect the Time Machine drive to the new mini and launch migration assistant. Only migrate “other files and folders” from the Time Machine backup and if it’s not too big your applications folder you can move those later or some of them to the new external home folder drive.only migrate apps if the older mac is also an Apple Silicon Mac if it’s an Intel Mac do not copy your applications. You will have to install newer versions. once that’s done get out of migration assistant. Now copy the home folder from the Time Machine backup to the new external ssd you can just open the latest backup on the Time Machine drive and copy over the home folder and if wanted the app folder. Now creat a new administrative user and activate the external home folder. I will try and make a video on this soon.
hello hey but explain to me theoretically, if for example my 2TB external drive gets full, how do I copy the data to the new one, will I have to buy a new enclosure with a new drive say 4TB and just copy the data from one to the other, or will I have to use a similar method of transfer as from internal to external drive. Or will it be possible to have two external drives in two enclosures 2 and 4TB at the same time with the same access without transferring the data, this is my first mac so this type of question. greetings
When I copied user folder over to new home folder, it showed that "The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items." I think the issue is the copying of Library. How can I resolve this issue?
I am a bit lost in how to do this. I currently have an older Intel 1TB iMac and I want to buy a new M4. I want to save money by only getting the 256GB version and use an external 2TB. Since I have filled about 450 GB on the old Mac, how would I be able to migrate my files and applications to the new iMac?
I have a M1 Mini with 256GB internal storage and have always had my home folder on an external drive, but one issue was that iCloud Drive wouldn't ever turn on. Thanks to your video, I saw that the external drive has to be APFS, so I formatted a new SSD as APFS, copied my home & applications folder over to it, and now iCloud Drive works! One tip to consider -- I've always maintained a separate "administrator" user account like you mentioned, but rather than doing that as the last step, try doing it as the first step and do all your copying thru that account. By doing this, I didn't have to logout of my iCloud account, re-download my entire photo library, and so forth -- once I finished the copying, I used the admin account to change the home folder of my main user account to the new SSD, rebooted, logged in as my main user account, and everything worked perfectly the first time. Great video, keep up the good work!
Brilliant, patient teacher! Golden. No yelling, no rants, just a quiet, gentle step by step guide to mastering something quite complex that has many moving parts. Now, if that little encryption challenge can be met in the same way, I'm doing this too.
I’ve been searching and searching for instructions on how to do this, and none of the results has explained everything the way you have. In particular, I’d been trying to find out if moving the home folder to an external drive would work with iCloud Drive - you’re the only one to provide the answer (yes). A huge thank you from a happy new 256GB Mac mini owner.
Thank you! Super helpful. New Mac user here. Bought the base Mac mini a few weeks ago preloaded with FCP and Logic Pro so I'm ready to move it to my new super fast external drive.
I love this video, it was a huge help. One thing that I didn't hear you say is that to MOVE files from one drive to another, you need to hold down the COMMAND key while dragging your folder and that will move the files instead of copying them. I also had trouble with moving the applications, I ended up having to let it do a copy and then go remove each app individually to get things working OK. But overall, worked like a charm.
Thanks for this video series. I was researching this very thing, and you are one of the first creators that I have seen who actually documented how to properly move your stuff to an external drive. I am almost ready to buy a mac mini, but would rather load up on RAM and not on SSD.
I really appreciate your knowledge and understanding of the Apple environment and how to customise it. Your explanation is exemplary and much appreciated.
Two things Lance: Firstly, once the internal home folder is copied to the external, I see no reason why the internal home folder can’t be entirely deleted. Secondly, as I commented on your first video to this series, the external drive should be formatted APFS encrypted for security. However, this presents an issue at boot and login with the primary account since there is no direct way to enter the external drive passphrase at boot. So, to enter the passphrase, the secondary admin account that’s created on the internal SSD needs to be used to enter the passphrase to mount the external drive. Afterwards, the relocated user account can be logged into.
I tried that exact method and got the same error at boot but maybe that’s because I didn’t pre encrypt it in the initial format process? I encrypted it after in the finder.
so I'm not sure how technical everyone here is, but given these things: 1. it's possible to decrypt the drive programmatically using a script that runs diskutil CLI, you can hardcode your password in the script since it's going to be encrypted on internal drive anyway 2. you can create a system service for that script which will make it run automatically on system start / before login I think you can make it work without the workaround. I have not personally tried this because I'm only researching how feasible this setup would be. If you're confused, copy paste this and ask AI, it's great for this stuff!
I tried this on an older version of macOS and when it did a major update i had all sorts of errors. Had to do a clean instal to fix. Luckily time machine had the files. Can anyone check this? I dont want that to happen again. Thank, great video!
I was keen on doing this after seeing the previous video, but when I looked it up I found all sorts of accounts of people saying they had had errors and had to re-install etc... I'm approaching this very cautiously. Maybe there's no point moving the home folder itself, but rather just keep all data/docs/music/video/apps etc on the external
I’m presently (trying)transferring my iMac to the new mini M4 with external. So happy you are here to guide me! Can’t wait to watch your next videos. Thank you for making these, no one else is making videos on this issue
A Big Thanks, Lance! I just followed your guide to relocate user folders on my older iMac, and it worked like a charm! The iMac is running macOS Sonoma through OpenCore Legacy Patcher, but unfortunately, I couldn’t get the Fusion Drive to work in this setup. Your solution to move the user folders to another internal drive turned out to be the perfect alternative-it’s running great now! I had no idea about the advanced options available when right-clicking a user account to set a new location for the home folder. That tip alone was a game-changer. Thanks again for sharing your expertise and for helping me breathe new life into this machine! Cheers, TJ
No, no-it’s actually another internal drive inside the iMac. The Fusion Drive got split into two separate drives because of how OCLP tricks the OS into booting on older, unsupported models. The iMac has a 512GB PCI SSD and a 4TB SATA SSD in there. Happy Thanksgiving to you too! 😜
Really helpful videos these. I am in the process of purchasing a Mac Mini and want to explore options to get more storage without paying the extortionate prices! Looking forward to seeing what else you find out!
Great timing on making this video! I've been running Logic Pro for years, making lots of Music too and never once thought about this approach. The only real drawback is the complexity of doing a backup, because now you will have to backup two drives instead of just the internal. While it does have the advantage of saving Lots of money buying a new Mac, it comes at the expense of backing up and accounting for two drives, which probably is not that big of a deal at the end of the day.
Yes true, backing up your user home folder is very easy, but I am looking into this. But if you create sym links to the internal system library for onto the external drive you should be able to just backup the external.
@@MacSoundSolutions Wow! Please let me know if this works... This is a Very, very cool idea! I might have to get a smaller ssd on my new machine, and max out the ram and do what you're saying here!! Keep up the good work, thank you!
thanks this is great.On the m4 mac mini its seems to be about three steps, first to format external ssdd. steps 2 and 3 can be done on settings>user account> select external drive for applications>chose location for home folder.
three steps if you are setting up a new mac mini without signing into icloud during initial setup. if you have signed in to icloud then this video is a fantastic walkthrough.
This is awesome! I was looking for to do this type of idea for my MacBook Pro. It came with 1TB and I had to delete many large files to keep it from getting full. One thing I suggest is use Samsung 4TB SSD or any other external already enclosed SSD. It is a small size and portable to carry easily.
On my 5,1's I have already done this, but a little differently. Not just for space, but for speed. I have 1TB NVMEs as my boot drives, and moved some of the larger folders that don't need the speed of the NVMEs and free a lot of space. I have folders on my HDDs for things like Documents, Downloads, Parallels, Pictures, and so on, then I made symbolic links back to their original locations. There are a very few things this will not work for, but it did work for the above folders, and many more. Some folders, like Mail, Cache, and other system folders I do want on the NVMEs for the speed.
How did you achived this? Did you created partitions and mounted directly on external drive? Was thinking about that, but I am more experienced in Linux than MacOs not sure MacOs allows that.
One helpful tip, because this gave me a little bit of a headache: to get the option in "View Options" menu to Show Library Folder, you need to be in List view for Finder. I typically navigate in column view in Finder, so I was not shown this option. Library Folder does continue to show in column view when you switch back. Thanks for the incredibly useful info, Lance!
Hi there. I saw Part 1 and thanks so much for sharing. I just got a new Mac Mini and it's been super helpful in getting my 2TB WD Black drive as a secondary disk. I made sure to use the new Apple Thunderbolt 4 USB-C pro cable which got me up to 900/mbps on the drive! Also, thanks for showing the toggle in App Store settings. I chose my external HD and once I installed Final Cut Pro (5.59 GB) -- MacOS created a new folder within the external HD called "Applications". As I understand it, MacOS looks at any file or install from the App Store that is over 1GB and will move it to the other drive. However, installing new apps into that external Applications folder didn't automatically add them to Launchpad nor did manually installing apps into the default Application folder move them over. I'm curious to test if rsync can be used to automatically create symlinks for new apps added to my external Applications folder. You can also drag an app onto the Launchpad icon and it will add a link to the app there too. However, using that method, I'm not sure how to remove them short of uninstalling an app. With symlinks you could just delete the link which is more efficient. Again thanks for making these videos!
You just hold option in launch pad and you can remove the apps you don’t want. I will try the drag into the doc icon method, I thought I did and it didn’t work but maybe not.
Again, a great video. I will do exactly as you. Buy the base model and move the home folder. I mean. Just sold my old M2 Mac Mini and got 500 dollars for it. So now I can buy the base model for 200. It's 700 dollars here in Sweden incl tax. I already have fast external drives ready to go. I can't thank you enough for these videos. This will save me and others so much money. Great job! I watched Max Techs comparison video and the base model of the M4 Mac Mini is as fast as the old M2 Pro Mac mini - bang for the buck.
@@ZenoMinus Yea. I actually sold it to a company here in Sweden called mResell. They buy used Apple products at a good price. Apple would have bought it back for 200 dollars. I like companies that don't rip off their costumers. Haha. Good luck with that sale :D
Subscribed even though I don't know what this channel is on about. I liked this video and the previous. It was clear, detailed, and understandable; and I plan to implement something like it with my base Mac mini. Thanks! I'll figure out what the channel is about as we go.
Great video. Unfortunately, I am stuck directly at the step of copying the user library to the external HDD. Even I am logged off Apple account and all iCloud processes are stopped, I am not able to copy user library. It always shows Error 0 and do not offer window with admin password. Restart of iMac did not help. So no go for me. Any advice how to solve this error?
I also don't get the admin password prompt. Instead I get the error prompt: The operation can’t be completed because “myuserlibrary” needs to be downloaded.
Thank you for the great video!!! That was exactly what i was searching for. Unfortunately i was not able to copy the user folder to the external drive allthough i strictly followed your steps!!! There was allways an error like"The operation could not be completed because the object "user folder" needs to be loaded." (Translated from german). Do you have any additional suggestions? Great work!!! Greetings from Germany
Great video Lance, thanks very much. On the subject of home security IF a thief can steal your external SSD then surely the thief could just as easily take the Mac its choice of 6 of 1 or a half dozen of another! Cheers.
Argh! I LOVE your tutorial.VERY helpful. When I try to move my apps to the external drive, it just makes an alias. Argh! How do I PHYSICALLY move them to the external drive?
@@rogerbrooks you have to move the whole folder not the apps, Apple system apps can’t be moved. I’m burnt right now by you might have to be logged in internally or externally not to just get a bunch of alias’s but just try moving the whole folder first. Best to keep the apps folder outside the external home folder because when you download apps over 1 gig after setting it up from the App Store they will go to the folder outside the home folder. If you put the app folder in the home folder App Store creates a new app folder outside the home folder then you wind up with two app folders on the same drive…
13:13 - I am totally new to Mac OS so may say not reasonable things :) but I see for the Applications on external drive there is a context menu option "create alias" so it can be used as an alternative to the command line aliases. After alias is created with the menu item it can be moved into Applications on internal drive and so it will appear in Launchpad
Absolute amazing stuff Lance. You're a true Apple tinkerer and thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. Looking forward to the next sequel. Cheers
Thanks for this video--it's very clear. But for my use case (web browsing and home entertainment), and my goal to simplify, simplify, simplify, I've decided to pay a little Apple tax and go for the 512 MB Mini. If the day should come that I'm hurting for space, *then* I will buy an external SSD, but keep my home directory and applications on the inside.
This is valid point, facing same dilemma. But RAM there is no way can be replaced, the internal drive is modular, it implies soldering not something everyone wants to risk doing it. I am pretty sure someone in next months is going to find a why to replace the SSD more convinently. You could potentialy than have a small beast for excelent price. I don't know I am trying to convince my self mostly. 😅
If you mean you have 126Gb of system data, I have just reduced my 400Gb of system data down to 70Gb (which is about normal apparently) on my M1 Macbook Pro. I rang Apple and although the machine is 3 years old, they talked me through using OmniDiskSweeper to track down where it was.
Thanks for this video. I didn't think I would be able to use my external nvme since I had already set up my m4 mac mini. problem solved now. I have a raycue mini hub on the way. so my external nvme will now "appear" to be internal since it mounts inside the hub that the mini rests on.
Great video, Mr, but I am thinking of not fully deleting all the applications and files within the internal disk because anything can happen to the external disk since it is not built into the Mac mini, which can save me from many troubles in the future. By the way, Thank you very much for your 1st and 2nd video
Very great and well done video, my M4 Mini is mounted in french and sometime I add to look carefully for the right thing to do. Now I have got everything working from an external disk, I choose the OWC enclosure and ssd, how do we back up, time machine is not on the external application folder. How do I proceed to back up?
Lance, I truly appreciate the guidance you are giving to us mortals. I would like to do exactly what you are explaining, but I have already moved all my data via migration assistant from my old mini to my new mini (old mini was sent back to Apple). Did you say that you were going to do a video for that scenario? In the past I have put my music library and photos on an external drive, but it did not work very well. Thanks for the help!
Thanks. I followed the instructions. It mostly works except for an error while copying the home directory. I copy the home directory using the local admin account instead. One of the downside is that the external ssd uses more power. The USB4 enclosure I have uses around 4-5W at idle and 1.5W when sleep.
Great video thanks. I thought it was just a few clicks and didn't realise there was more to it. Fortunately, 1 TB is enough for me when I do upgrade my Mac and I'm okay paying the extra $200 'Apple Tax' for internal storage and piece of mind. but YMMV. 😀
@@franciscosunworld new video coming soon maybe tomorrow, you can set it up so the Time Machine backs up the external home folder and your internal files.
You helped me out a bunch and Im rocking now. Question…. 🙋♂️. Do you know how to install Reason so it’s on an external drive? Or will proper files migrate to the external drive with the home folder 1gig plus setting ?
I don’t use reason but I just installed logic pro on my external drive and was able to migrate all the samples and instruments in logic. They have an option to relocate your samples, etc. but you may have to create sym links. If reason doesn’t allow you to move them, you can move them anyway create some links and put them in the place where the reason folders are in the system
@ thanks. Yea I’m old school. My concern is, getting way too close to hitting the max storage before I try and move files off the external but only one way to find out. But it’s the last thing I need loaded so that’s promising
Thanks for sharing ❤ about the external drive, can it be used on another Mac without any issues, right? That way, I can just bring my hard drive to work instead of carrying the Mac itself.
You can not to what you said following the instructions of the video, this is like an artificial lung, solution. The external drive sobtituite a vital organ that has to be always connected. What you want to have instead is a normal external storage device where you just place heavy stuff to free some space, the solution proposed is more radical.
Great tutorial, thank you! Would love a follow up tutorial on how to port the external Home and Applications from one Mac to another Mac. For example, say I run your tutorial and create an external Home and Apps on my Mac Mini M4 and next year I buy the M5. How do I successfully move my external Home and Apps to my new computer?
Nice! Will be doing this soon! Will leaving my internal ssd as empty as possible make the Mac Mini M4 even faster, since there’s more memory for the RAM to use for memory swap?
Aorus FO48 u oled, I love it and got it cheap on Newegg a year ago or so. It does have an issue with constantly dimming when you’re not active on it, which a lot of people complain about, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me and it preserves the life of the monitor.
Hey ! thank you so much for what you do ! i was wondering, is it still possible to save your home folder on the cloud as well (using icloud subscription ??) Thanks a lot in advance for your time!
most things in the home folder get stored in iCloud as long as you have all the apps turned on photos, documents, desktop etc. so not sure there is a point to put the whole home folder on iCloud Drive but for things that don’t get stored via iCloud apps, you could make a backup folder on your iCloud Drive and copy things there, but you probably will need a very large iCloud account
@@MacSoundSolutions thanks a lot for your answers!!! it's what i wanted to hear! that the home folder doesn't "lose" it's ability to get stored on the cloud, once it's put on an external drive. Thanks a lot to you !!!
I have ran into the following problem with the latest update and the homefolder on the external drive - once the system Updated to the latest OS it can happen that it can no longer log into the user with the external homefolder , you need your backup admin local logon to select the location of the external folder again and then it works again after doing some more steps at the next logon
Great video thanks for it. I was in the process of copying all the files from my internal home drive to the external. I have done all the previous steps and when i try it says it cant copy some of the files because i dont have permission? I am on my account and i have admin rights i have checked the info on the library folder and it says my user has read and write rights. So now im a bit stuck. Did this happen to you?
Never mind, my work around was to copy each folder one by one, and the ones that for some reason was not allowing me to copy over I just created a new folder with the same name in the external folder. The folders it would not let me copy were empty so i took a chance and it worked 😅 this was done on an intel mac mini. But now im happy i freed up like 60 GB from the the meager 128 that the mac mini came with. thanks a lot again.
wrote the question just before the last part of the video! thanks... I was guessing that a password prototeted drive could produce some troubleshootings
@@oterotube13 the work around is to log into an internal admin account first and it will ask you for the encrypted external drive password put it in and click the save to key chain, then switch users to the external user and your in. Fastest way is to have auto login to the internal user turned on then when you boot you only have to switch to the external and type the external users password. This is the only work around I have found so far.
Great video! I am looking at the Mac Mini and this process you have explained so well is what I want to do. I have a 2TB ssd in a new exclosure already, so I am looking at the memory requirements/needs/wants as you did. So do you think 24gb is enough or are you headed for more? Thanks again😊
I think it really depends what you have to do with it, check some benchmarks with the software you need to use, like graphic design stuff, lot of people tested this little monsters already, for domestic use and home enteratinemnte 16Gb/24Gb more than enough I guess
Yes, best thing to do is run apples activity monitor located in the utilities folder and see how much memory you use on a daily basis that should give you a good idea Apple now lets the OS use as much memory as possible when it’s available like eight gigs, but that number goes down as you start actually using the memory for other things doesn’t affect performance but if you’re gonna have the Mac for a long time, the more memory the better
It’s not going anywhere still using it basically my ProTools rig and my gaming PC, but I wanna be able to use all the new functionality of Final Cut Pro on the Mac mini
I purchased the ZikeDrive but no communication/tracking since it hit the states 5 days ago in PA. I'm in MA, and it should have arrived by now. Thoughts?
Hi. thanks so much for that. Helps a lot to keep the file size down on my Mac mini. However I am running into some issues cleaning the original apps and folders. Most of the time I get this error (The operation cannot be completed because some items had to be skipped. For each item, choose File > Get Info, make sure Protected is unchecked, then select the Sharing & Permissions section. If you are sure the items are not protected and are not set to Read Only or No Permissions, try again) I checked it and as admin I should have all permissions right? I was able to delete the apps using terminal and sudo rm -rf /applicatonpath.... But am not sure if I should do it like that on the library folder. Is there anything else I can check? Thanks in Advance
Had the same problem, I believe that disabling csrutil from terminal in safe mode will do the job, I didn’t have time to try it, but I may figured out a way, from space in general settings, then clicking the info icon in applications, it seems that deleting the apps from that menu it actually works although nothing visually happens when you click erase, on the following startup you’ll find the missing icons on the apps you erased. But I guess I’ll try the csrutil way, there’s plenty of guides on youtube
Hi Lance, I plan on buying a new mac mini and have my home folder (not applications folder) moved to external SSD. Could I follow the Part 1 of your video to create the external home folder on my mac mini and once that is done, use Migration Assistant to migrate all my data (including applications) over? I'm currently using an Intel iMac. Will the data in my iMac be moved to the respective folders (Internal for applications and external for home folder) of my mac mini? Appreciate the help and all the wonderful videos! Sure is the best I have seen so far!! :)
You would just want to encrypt the apfs drive before all of your other steps if you wanted to, or you can do it afterwards. Disk utility has all kinds of cool features.
@@TheTechJunkDrawer That is very interesting. I boot from mine every day and it’s encrypted. However I have the entire OS installed externally, so that might be the big difference. Also there was a process to bless and authorize the drive the first time around, so idk if that’s possible without having to install the OS externally.
I have one 1TB external SSD (named T1) used for anything i don't want to tore on the internal SSD. The other 1TB SSD is for time machine. Would it make sense to partition T1 SSD with another just for Home folder? GREAT INFO good job!!
I’m interested in doing this but before I do so will I be able to use Time Machine to make backups of the external drive and then recover any information using Time Machine?
I tried this to make this work with an m4 using a hard drive I had been using with my m2.. but unfortunately I had no joy 😪 when I came to opening up the user after moving the home folder etc - it just wouldn’t open back up, hoping the next video you make will solve the problem
I followed your guidance but the original Applications folder is still getting the applications installed to it? It still have the little icon on it. How do it get the app folder over to the new external drive?
Watch my latest video, but you can tell the App Store in the settings to download apps larger than one gig to a specific location like the external hard drive
Yes I will and yes that’s true. But sometimes folks get crazy about hard drive speeds, most apps do not access the drives at nearly the speeds that the drives can operate so it’s more of a slow down when copying data from one drive to another.
@MacSoundSolutions... OBSERVATION: 'Show Library Folder' only appears as a selectable option only in 'as List' view. The option DOES NOT appear if you are viewing as, 'Icons', 'Columns', or 'Gallery'. Great Video! I just purchased the Mac Mini M4 (base model) and watching this video and performing the steps 1 by 1..... (YAY)
Is there anyway of doing this with an external ssd that’s in use?? Without erasing it and reformatting? Currently use an ssd as a boot drive for my m2 and want to keep all my data / BitWig projects - sample libraries and plugins as they are 🙏🏻
nice tutorial! I'm not a heavy app user (I have Lightroom and Photoshop), my data is already on external storage (I never keep my data on the same storage as the OS, I do it regardless of the OS) but it's nice to know I can go nuclear on the bloat :)
Thanks for the great suggestion! part 1 and 2 have been very helpful. Question: if I wanted to increase the ssd size of my external home folder, should I just copy everything over to the larger storage and make sure the home folder path has the same name? this would also ensure that this fix is sustainable over time.
yes you can just copy it to another drive when your not logged into it then it should copy to another drive, but if your still logged into your apple account and using tthe external home folder on the external drive you most likely will get an error trying to copy it. So that's why one needs to keep internal separate administrator user to log into. I also used time machine and it backed up my user and my internal data with the proper settings.
Hi Lance, I followed the steps and working great but for some reason my downloads keep going to the internal hard drive and I have to move them by hand. Both user names folders (internal and external hard drive) have the apple little signs on the folders so that means that the internal still active some how. The path on the users & groups says my external hd.
Hey thanks for this concise video, quick question: what would happen if you remove the external SSD (for moving or by accident if it the Mac is completely turned off)? Thanks
@@viwesterboer1326 that’s why you should have a backup user admin account which takes up know space. In case your external is not connected you can still get into the Mac.
Hello this video is really great, one question. is there a way to just use the external harddrive for the heavy mac apps/software. So i can just plug it in when i wanna use that.
Yes any apps that are downloaded can run off the external, some may have data tied to the system so if you plug the user into another Mac they may not load, really depends on the app.
Phenomenal Work!, Just 3 questions, i can't just delete the old home folder in the internal ssd? Why do i have to keep it?, and, Can i open the apps on the external ssd using spotlight? Thank you for this amazing video.
You should be able to delete the internal user as long as you have a second user account with administrative permissions, the applications folder is not part of the use account folder. Going to try this today.
Thanks for this, Lance: it would never have occurred to me to turn off iCloud… However, I got the dreaded ‘-8062’ error when copying the contents of my Home Folder, meaning I couldn’t just walk away and let the Finder do its thing: I had to move folders and sub-folders across individually. I took me around an hour to migrate the Library folder..!!! All working, now, though…. This ‘-8062’ error has been there across Ventura, Sonoma and, now, Sequoia and none of the fixes work. Just got to get an 8TB nVME in the Black Friday sales to house my Home Folder (currently on a 4TB SSD). ETA: I've noticed, however, that the folders in the Sidebar don't have their individual icons on them, now, they're all just generic folders... :0(
Hi Lance, You mentioned that you can’t have the Time Machine backup on the same disk. However, if you partition the disk (in my case, an NVMe on a Quizzlab hub), I think the system treats it as a separate disk. Could you elaborate on this?
it's a good idea to keep all data you don't want others to have access to in a filevault folder. there are also good third party apps that can help manage multiple folders and drives -- personally i use a third party privacy app on top of my filevault folder for the really important stuff, like ip not yet patented. another thing you should do is get a file shredder app because even though the data from the emptied trash can't be "recovered", it's still there for someone who knows what they're doing to recover -- a shredder app actually overwrites the data with new data 3 times, or more depending on the app.
If you are going to migrate data from another Mac I think this is the best way to go about it. Updated! Make a Time Machine copy of your old computer don’t encrypt it on a dedicated drive. Then connect the Time Machine drive to the new mini and launch migration assistant. Only migrate “other files and folders” from the Time Machine backup and if it’s not too big your applications folder you can move those later or some of them to the new external home folder drive.only migrate apps if the older mac is also an Apple Silicon Mac if it’s an Intel Mac do not copy your applications. You will have to install newer versions. once that’s done get out of migration assistant. Now copy the home folder from the Time Machine backup to the new external ssd you can just open the latest backup on the Time Machine drive and copy over the home folder and if wanted the app folder. Now creat a new administrative user and activate the external home folder. I will try and make a video on this soon.
hello hey but explain to me theoretically, if for example my 2TB external drive gets full, how do I copy the data to the new one, will I have to buy a new enclosure with a new drive say 4TB and just copy the data from one to the other, or will I have to use a similar method of transfer as from internal to external drive. Or will it be possible to have two external drives in two enclosures 2 and 4TB at the same time with the same access without transferring the data, this is my first mac so this type of question. greetings
not sure I understand, could you make a video about migrating old mac to a new one while making the home folder external ?
When I copied user folder over to new home folder, it showed that "The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items." I think the issue is the copying of Library. How can I resolve this issue?
Plz make a video showing this with a Time Machine backup from an old Mac that had everything in internal😢
I am a bit lost in how to do this. I currently have an older Intel 1TB iMac and I want to buy a new M4. I want to save money by only getting the 256GB version and use an external 2TB. Since I have filled about 450 GB on the old Mac, how would I be able to migrate my files and applications to the new iMac?
I have a M1 Mini with 256GB internal storage and have always had my home folder on an external drive, but one issue was that iCloud Drive wouldn't ever turn on. Thanks to your video, I saw that the external drive has to be APFS, so I formatted a new SSD as APFS, copied my home & applications folder over to it, and now iCloud Drive works!
One tip to consider -- I've always maintained a separate "administrator" user account like you mentioned, but rather than doing that as the last step, try doing it as the first step and do all your copying thru that account. By doing this, I didn't have to logout of my iCloud account, re-download my entire photo library, and so forth -- once I finished the copying, I used the admin account to change the home folder of my main user account to the new SSD, rebooted, logged in as my main user account, and everything worked perfectly the first time.
Great video, keep up the good work!
Brilliant, patient teacher! Golden. No yelling, no rants, just a quiet, gentle step by step guide to mastering something quite complex that has many moving parts. Now, if that little encryption challenge can be met in the same way, I'm doing this too.
@@oldscribe6153 been playing around with encryption and did get it working but just want to be sure of the best method.
I’ve been searching and searching for instructions on how to do this, and none of the results has explained everything the way you have. In particular, I’d been trying to find out if moving the home folder to an external drive would work with iCloud Drive - you’re the only one to provide the answer (yes). A huge thank you from a happy new 256GB Mac mini owner.
When someone knows what they are talking about, it shows! Thank you!
Thank you! Super helpful. New Mac user here. Bought the base Mac mini a few weeks ago preloaded with FCP and Logic Pro so I'm ready to move it to my new super fast external drive.
@@toddbornholtz6758 I just installed Logic and moved the app and relocated the 100 gigs of sound library’s to my external drive.
I love this video, it was a huge help. One thing that I didn't hear you say is that to MOVE files from one drive to another, you need to hold down the COMMAND key while dragging your folder and that will move the files instead of copying them. I also had trouble with moving the applications, I ended up having to let it do a copy and then go remove each app individually to get things working OK. But overall, worked like a charm.
@@BillWehnert I prefer not to move because if something goes wrong you are stuck, safer to delete after you see all is good. Glad it worked out.
Thanks for this video series. I was researching this very thing, and you are one of the first creators that I have seen who actually documented how to properly move your stuff to an external drive. I am almost ready to buy a mac mini, but would rather load up on RAM and not on SSD.
I prefer your advice rather than those advices from so-called tech reviewers.
💯👍👍👍
I really appreciate your knowledge and understanding of the Apple environment and how to customise it. Your explanation is exemplary and much appreciated.
Probably the most useful video for a long long time
Thanks!
Two things Lance: Firstly, once the internal home folder is copied to the external, I see no reason why the internal home folder can’t be entirely deleted. Secondly, as I commented on your first video to this series, the external drive should be formatted APFS encrypted for security. However, this presents an issue at boot and login with the primary account since there is no direct way to enter the external drive passphrase at boot. So, to enter the passphrase, the secondary admin account that’s created on the internal SSD needs to be used to enter the passphrase to mount the external drive. Afterwards, the relocated user account can be logged into.
I tried that exact method and got the same error at boot but maybe that’s because I didn’t pre encrypt it in the initial format process? I encrypted it after in the finder.
Home folder (/home) only contains your personal files, docs, videos, music, etc.; the whole OS is still on internal drive and has to stay there.
@@ZenoMinus Not sure of the point you’re trying to make, but I would want my personal stuff encrypted.
so I'm not sure how technical everyone here is, but given these things:
1. it's possible to decrypt the drive programmatically using a script that runs diskutil CLI, you can hardcode your password in the script since it's going to be encrypted on internal drive anyway
2. you can create a system service for that script which will make it run automatically on system start / before login
I think you can make it work without the workaround. I have not personally tried this because I'm only researching how feasible this setup would be. If you're confused, copy paste this and ask AI, it's great for this stuff!
I tried this on an older version of macOS and when it did a major update i had all sorts of errors. Had to do a clean instal to fix. Luckily time machine had the files. Can anyone check this? I dont want that to happen again. Thank, great video!
That should not be but I’m getting my mini tomorrow and will do an updated video.
I was keen on doing this after seeing the previous video, but when I looked it up I found all sorts of accounts of people saying they had had errors and had to re-install etc... I'm approaching this very cautiously. Maybe there's no point moving the home folder itself, but rather just keep all data/docs/music/video/apps etc on the external
Great info! I appreciate the time you took to post this.
Thanks Greg!
I’m presently (trying)transferring my iMac to the new mini M4 with external. So happy you are here to guide me! Can’t wait to watch your next videos. Thank you for making these, no one else is making videos on this issue
Thanks!
Hey, thanks Bill much appreciated
A Big Thanks, Lance! I just followed your guide to relocate user folders on my older iMac, and it worked like a charm! The iMac is running macOS Sonoma through OpenCore Legacy Patcher, but unfortunately, I couldn’t get the Fusion Drive to work in this setup. Your solution to move the user folders to another internal drive turned out to be the perfect alternative-it’s running great now! I had no idea about the advanced options available when right-clicking a user account to set a new location for the home folder. That tip alone was a game-changer. Thanks again for sharing your expertise and for helping me breathe new life into this machine! Cheers, TJ
@@teejay Happy Thanksgiving and I think you meant moving to the external ?😉
No, no-it’s actually another internal drive inside the iMac. The Fusion Drive got split into two separate drives because of how OCLP tricks the OS into booting on older, unsupported models. The iMac has a 512GB PCI SSD and a 4TB SATA SSD in there.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too! 😜
Really helpful videos these. I am in the process of purchasing a Mac Mini and want to explore options to get more storage without paying the extortionate prices! Looking forward to seeing what else you find out!
By this can we store our iphone backup in external drive ??
Yes your bios backups will get save to the external home folder User/ library / backups
Brilliant guide and thanks for the coupon code. The enclosure was already on sale and with your code was an affordable £76.28
Great timing on making this video! I've been running Logic Pro for years, making lots of Music too and never once thought about this approach. The only real drawback is the complexity of doing a backup, because now you will have to backup two drives instead of just the internal. While it does have the advantage of saving Lots of money buying a new Mac, it comes at the expense of backing up and accounting for two drives, which probably is not that big of a deal at the end of the day.
Yes true, backing up your user home folder is very easy, but I am looking into this. But if you create sym links to the internal system library for onto the external drive you should be able to just backup the external.
@@MacSoundSolutions Wow! Please let me know if this works... This is a Very, very cool idea! I might have to get a smaller ssd on my new machine, and max out the ram and do what you're saying here!! Keep up the good work, thank you!
thanks this is great.On the m4 mac mini its seems to be about three steps, first to format external ssdd. steps 2 and 3 can be done on settings>user account> select external drive for applications>chose location for home folder.
three steps if you are setting up a new mac mini without signing into icloud during initial setup. if you have signed in to icloud then this video is a fantastic walkthrough.
This is awesome! I was looking for to do this type of idea for my MacBook Pro. It came with 1TB and I had to delete many large files to keep it from getting full. One thing I suggest is use Samsung 4TB SSD or any other external already enclosed SSD. It is a small size and portable to carry easily.
I bought everything through your links... Thanks again!!!!
On my 5,1's I have already done this, but a little differently. Not just for space, but for speed. I have 1TB NVMEs as my boot drives, and moved some of the larger folders that don't need the speed of the NVMEs and free a lot of space. I have folders on my HDDs for things like Documents, Downloads, Parallels, Pictures, and so on, then I made symbolic links back to their original locations. There are a very few things this will not work for, but it did work for the above folders, and many more. Some folders, like Mail, Cache, and other system folders I do want on the NVMEs for the speed.
How did you achived this? Did you created partitions and mounted directly on external drive?
Was thinking about that, but I am more experienced in Linux than MacOs not sure MacOs allows that.
One helpful tip, because this gave me a little bit of a headache: to get the option in "View Options" menu to Show Library Folder, you need to be in List view for Finder. I typically navigate in column view in Finder, so I was not shown this option. Library Folder does continue to show in column view when you switch back. Thanks for the incredibly useful info, Lance!
Hi there. I saw Part 1 and thanks so much for sharing. I just got a new Mac Mini and it's been super helpful in getting my 2TB WD Black drive as a secondary disk. I made sure to use the new Apple Thunderbolt 4 USB-C pro cable which got me up to 900/mbps on the drive!
Also, thanks for showing the toggle in App Store settings. I chose my external HD and once I installed Final Cut Pro (5.59 GB) -- MacOS created a new folder within the external HD called "Applications". As I understand it, MacOS looks at any file or install from the App Store that is over 1GB and will move it to the other drive. However, installing new apps into that external Applications folder didn't automatically add them to Launchpad nor did manually installing apps into the default Application folder move them over.
I'm curious to test if rsync can be used to automatically create symlinks for new apps added to my external Applications folder. You can also drag an app onto the Launchpad icon and it will add a link to the app there too. However, using that method, I'm not sure how to remove them short of uninstalling an app. With symlinks you could just delete the link which is more efficient.
Again thanks for making these videos!
You just hold option in launch pad and you can remove the apps you don’t want. I will try the drag into the doc icon method, I thought I did and it didn’t work but maybe not.
@@MacSoundSolutions Would be nice if someone make an app that automatically creates the symlinks for you so it is just seemless
Any reason why you can't go with APFS Encrypted on the entire external to get around the security issue you mentioned?
Again, a great video. I will do exactly as you. Buy the base model and move the home folder. I mean. Just sold my old M2 Mac Mini and got 500 dollars for it. So now I can buy the base model for 200. It's 700 dollars here in Sweden incl tax. I already have fast external drives ready to go. I can't thank you enough for these videos. This will save me and others so much money. Great job!
I watched Max Techs comparison video and the base model of the M4 Mac Mini is as fast as the old M2 Pro Mac mini - bang for the buck.
That was a good sell! Good for you man, I check refurbished site and someone is selling mac mini M1 for 600euro 🤣
@@ZenoMinus Yea. I actually sold it to a company here in Sweden called mResell. They buy used Apple products at a good price. Apple would have bought it back for 200 dollars. I like companies that don't rip off their costumers.
Haha. Good luck with that sale :D
Subscribed even though I don't know what this channel is on about. I liked this video and the previous. It was clear, detailed, and understandable; and I plan to implement something like it with my base Mac mini. Thanks! I'll figure out what the channel is about as we go.
It’s about my passion for tinkering with Macs.
Great video. Unfortunately, I am stuck directly at the step of copying the user library to the external HDD. Even I am logged off Apple account and all iCloud processes are stopped, I am not able to copy user library. It always shows Error 0 and do not offer window with admin password. Restart of iMac did not help. So no go for me. Any advice how to solve this error?
I also don't get the admin password prompt. Instead I get the error prompt: The operation can’t be completed because “myuserlibrary” needs to be downloaded.
Thank you for the great video!!! That was exactly what i was searching for. Unfortunately i was not able to copy the user folder to the external drive allthough i strictly followed your steps!!! There was allways an error like"The operation could not be completed because the object "user folder" needs to be loaded." (Translated from german). Do you have any additional suggestions? Great work!!! Greetings from Germany
same here. did you find a solution?
@@tom_hengst Sorry no! Since the mac was very new and haven'used it much i started all over with a clean insallation!
Great video Lance, thanks very much. On the subject of home security IF a thief can steal your external SSD then surely the thief could just as easily take the Mac its choice of 6 of 1 or a half dozen of another! Cheers.
True
Argh! I LOVE your tutorial.VERY helpful. When I try to move my apps to the external drive, it just makes an alias. Argh! How do I PHYSICALLY move them to the external drive?
@@rogerbrooks you have to move the whole folder not the apps, Apple system apps can’t be moved. I’m burnt right now by you might have to be logged in internally or externally not to just get a bunch of alias’s but just try moving the whole folder first. Best to keep the apps folder outside the external home folder because when you download apps over 1 gig after setting it up from the App Store they will go to the folder outside the home folder. If you put the app folder in the home folder App Store creates a new app folder outside the home folder then you wind up with two app folders on the same drive…
Thank you for this video. I wanna ask will this also work for an intel iMac?
This is awesome... Thanks!!!
super.. i watched part 1 and was patiently waiting for part 2 ;)
13:13 - I am totally new to Mac OS so may say not reasonable things :)
but I see for the Applications on external drive there is a context menu option "create alias" so it can be used as an alternative to the command line aliases. After alias is created with the menu item it can be moved into Applications on internal drive and so it will appear in Launchpad
Is it possible to do the exact same process using a LAN cable connection to a Synology DS923plus NAS driver as Home folder?
Absolute amazing stuff Lance. You're a true Apple tinkerer and thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. Looking forward to the next sequel. Cheers
Thanks for this video--it's very clear. But for my use case (web browsing and home entertainment), and my goal to simplify, simplify, simplify, I've decided to pay a little Apple tax and go for the 512 MB Mini. If the day should come that I'm hurting for space, *then* I will buy an external SSD, but keep my home directory and applications on the inside.
This is valid point, facing same dilemma. But RAM there is no way can be replaced, the internal drive is modular, it implies soldering not something everyone wants to risk doing it.
I am pretty sure someone in next months is going to find a why to replace the SSD more convinently.
You could potentialy than have a small beast for excelent price.
I don't know I am trying to convince my self mostly. 😅
This will be the same for the Mac book air all
So right ? Because I can’t find a way to delete the 126 system data eating up most of my memory
Yes can be done with any Mac.
@@MacSoundSolutions You can, but should you?
I can immagine a harddrive permanently connected to a desktop, but to a notebook? 🤐
If you mean you have 126Gb of system data, I have just reduced my 400Gb of system data down to 70Gb (which is about normal apparently) on my M1 Macbook Pro. I rang Apple and although the machine is 3 years old, they talked me through using OmniDiskSweeper to track down where it was.
Thanks for this video. I didn't think I would be able to use my external nvme since I had already set up my m4 mac mini. problem solved now. I have a raycue mini hub on the way. so my external nvme will now "appear" to be internal since it mounts inside the hub that the mini rests on.
Great video, Mr, but I am thinking of not fully deleting all the applications and files within the internal disk because anything can happen to the external disk since it is not built into the Mac mini, which can save me from many troubles in the future. By the way, Thank you very much for your 1st and 2nd video
Apples has a rescue image on the drive that could be used to restore stuff, but I am more trying to convince my self here 😅
Man! It was a life changer video! Thanks!!!
Very great and well done video, my M4 Mini is mounted in french and sometime I add to look carefully for the right thing to do. Now I have got everything working from an external disk, I choose the OWC enclosure and ssd, how do we back up, time machine is not on the external application folder. How do I proceed to back up?
Hi Lance, great video, thank you. I've noticed that my home folder does not have a 'Sites' folder. Should I be concerned about this before proceeding?
Not an issue, that’s for local web hosting
Thanks for a great video. Curious … would there be any special steps necessary when installing a MacOS update?
Lance, I truly appreciate the guidance you are giving to us mortals. I would like to do exactly what you are explaining, but I have already moved all my data via migration assistant from my old mini to my new mini (old mini was sent back to Apple). Did you say that you were going to do a video for that scenario? In the past I have put my music library and photos on an external drive, but it did not work very well. Thanks for the help!
the video guide ok is very useful. but you should also make it a written guide, do you know if there is already something with text and images?
written guide on Apple Insider
appleinsider.com/inside/macos-ventura/tips/how-to-move-your-home-directory-in-macos-ventura
Thanks. I followed the instructions. It mostly works except for an error while copying the home directory. I copy the home directory using the local admin account instead.
One of the downside is that the external ssd uses more power. The USB4 enclosure I have uses around 4-5W at idle and 1.5W when sleep.
Another problem that I found is that trash in the old home directory cannot be deleted. I have to go to recovery to delete it.
Is "sudo trimforce enable" still needed in Sequoia?
Great video thanks. I thought it was just a few clicks and didn't realise there was more to it. Fortunately, 1 TB is enough for me when I do upgrade my Mac and I'm okay paying the extra $200 'Apple Tax' for internal storage and piece of mind. but YMMV. 😀
Great idea but I would like to know what happens when you backup in Time Machine...thanks a lot
@@franciscosunworld new video coming soon maybe tomorrow, you can set it up so the Time Machine backs up the external home folder and your internal files.
You helped me out a bunch and Im rocking now. Question…. 🙋♂️. Do you know how to install Reason so it’s on an external drive? Or will proper files migrate to the external drive with the home folder 1gig plus setting ?
I don’t use reason but I just installed logic pro on my external drive and was able to migrate all the samples and instruments in logic. They have an option to relocate your samples, etc. but you may have to create sym links. If reason doesn’t allow you to move them, you can move them anyway create some links and put them in the place where the reason folders are in the system
@ thanks. Yea I’m old school. My concern is, getting way too close to hitting the max storage before I try and move files off the external but only one way to find out. But it’s the last thing I need loaded so that’s promising
Thanks for sharing ❤ about the external drive, can it be used on another Mac without any issues, right? That way, I can just bring my hard drive to work instead of carrying the Mac itself.
You can not to what you said following the instructions of the video, this is like an artificial lung, solution.
The external drive sobtituite a vital organ that has to be always connected.
What you want to have instead is a normal external storage device where you just place heavy stuff to free some space, the solution proposed is more radical.
Great tutorial, thank you! Would love a follow up tutorial on how to port the external Home and Applications from one Mac to another Mac. For example, say I run your tutorial and create an external Home and Apps on my Mac Mini M4 and next year I buy the M5. How do I successfully move my external Home and Apps to my new computer?
Nice! Will be doing this soon! Will leaving my internal ssd as empty as possible make the Mac Mini M4 even faster, since there’s more memory for the RAM to use for memory swap?
Useful, thanks. What’s your monitor?
Aorus FO48 u oled, I love it and got it cheap on Newegg a year ago or so. It does have an issue with constantly dimming when you’re not active on it, which a lot of people complain about, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me and it preserves the life of the monitor.
Thanks, Lance! I look forward to moving my home folder as soon as I get a suitable drive. BTW, what happens to Homebrew paclages?
Hey ! thank you so much for what you do ! i was wondering, is it still possible to save your home folder on the cloud as well (using icloud subscription ??) Thanks a lot in advance for your time!
most things in the home folder get stored in iCloud as long as you have all the apps turned on photos, documents, desktop etc. so not sure there is a point to put the whole home folder on iCloud Drive but for things that don’t get stored via iCloud apps, you could make a backup folder on your iCloud Drive and copy things there, but you probably will need a very large iCloud account
@@MacSoundSolutions thanks a lot for your answers!!! it's what i wanted to hear! that the home folder doesn't "lose" it's ability to get stored on the cloud, once it's put on an external drive. Thanks a lot to you !!!
Thank you for this great tutorial.
I have ran into the following problem with the latest update and the homefolder on the external drive - once the system Updated to the latest OS it can happen that it can no longer log into the user with the external homefolder , you need your backup admin local logon to select the location of the external folder again and then it works again after doing some more steps at the next logon
Good to know will test this out with my new mini
Great video thanks for it. I was in the process of copying all the files from my internal home drive to the external. I have done all the previous steps and when i try it says it cant copy some of the files because i dont have permission?
I am on my account and i have admin rights i have checked the info on the library folder and it says my user has read and write rights. So now im a bit stuck. Did this happen to you?
Never mind, my work around was to copy each folder one by one, and the ones that for some reason was not allowing me to copy over I just created a new folder with the same name in the external folder. The folders it would not let me copy were empty so i took a chance and it worked 😅 this was done on an intel mac mini. But now im happy i freed up like 60 GB from the the meager 128 that the mac mini came with. thanks a lot again.
hi. do you know if there is a proble if you form at the disk with a password with security if you set your home directory there_?
wrote the question just before the last part of the video! thanks... I was guessing that a password prototeted drive could produce some troubleshootings
@@oterotube13 the work around is to log into an internal admin account first and it will ask you for the encrypted external drive password put it in and click the save to key chain, then switch users to the external user and your in. Fastest way is to have auto login to the internal user turned on then when you boot you only have to switch to the external and type the external users password. This is the only work around I have found so far.
I think it is pretty viable. I think you nailed it. Thanks.
Great new Info Lance!! TY!
Thanks for this video, made a big difference to the space on my mac devices.
Great video! I am looking at the Mac Mini and this process you have explained so well is what I want to do. I have a 2TB ssd in a new exclosure already, so I am looking at the memory requirements/needs/wants as you did. So do you think 24gb is enough or are you headed for more? Thanks again😊
I think it really depends what you have to do with it, check some benchmarks with the software you need to use, like graphic design stuff, lot of people tested this little monsters already, for domestic use and home enteratinemnte 16Gb/24Gb more than enough I guess
Yes, best thing to do is run apples activity monitor located in the utilities folder and see how much memory you use on a daily basis that should give you a good idea Apple now lets the OS use as much memory as possible when it’s available like eight gigs, but that number goes down as you start actually using the memory for other things doesn’t affect performance but if you’re gonna have the Mac for a long time, the more memory the better
Thank you so much! Bookmarked, and I'll take it out when the time comes. 🙏 🤘🏼
What happened to the Mac Pro 7,1 beast?
The base Mac mini m4 smokes it 😜
It’s not going anywhere still using it basically my ProTools rig and my gaming PC, but I wanna be able to use all the new functionality of Final Cut Pro on the Mac mini
I purchased the ZikeDrive but no communication/tracking since it hit the states 5 days ago in PA. I'm in MA, and it should have arrived by now. Thoughts?
Thanks for sharing all this information. Amazing stuff. Cheers
Hi. thanks so much for that. Helps a lot to keep the file size down on my Mac mini. However I am running into some issues cleaning the original apps and folders. Most of the time I get this error (The operation cannot be completed because some items had to be skipped. For each item, choose File > Get Info, make sure Protected is unchecked, then select the Sharing & Permissions section. If you are sure the items are not protected and are not set to Read Only or No Permissions, try again) I checked it and as admin I should have all permissions right?
I was able to delete the apps using terminal and sudo rm -rf /applicatonpath.... But am not sure if I should do it like that on the library folder. Is there anything else I can check?
Thanks in Advance
Had the same problem, I believe that disabling csrutil from terminal in safe mode will do the job, I didn’t have time to try it, but I may figured out a way, from space in general settings, then clicking the info icon in applications, it seems that deleting the apps from that menu it actually works although nothing visually happens when you click erase, on the following startup you’ll find the missing icons on the apps you erased. But I guess I’ll try the csrutil way, there’s plenty of guides on youtube
@@MrFabinskywhat do you mean by ‘from space’ in general settings? Thanks
@@ballkd1I meant storage ahah
Hi Lance, I plan on buying a new mac mini and have my home folder (not applications folder) moved to external SSD. Could I follow the Part 1 of your video to create the external home folder on my mac mini and once that is done, use Migration Assistant to migrate all my data (including applications) over? I'm currently using an Intel iMac. Will the data in my iMac be moved to the respective folders (Internal for applications and external for home folder) of my mac mini? Appreciate the help and all the wonderful videos! Sure is the best I have seen so far!! :)
Please watch the section about Security at the end of the video before attempting this. 16:10
You would just want to encrypt the apfs drive before all of your other steps if you wanted to, or you can do it afterwards. Disk utility has all kinds of cool features.
@@ghost-user559 I had external encrypted and it would not boot into the external home folder.
Waiting for response about the security, (I have my external encrypted)
@@TheTechJunkDrawer That is very interesting. I boot from mine every day and it’s encrypted. However I have the entire OS installed externally, so that might be the big difference. Also there was a process to bless and authorize the drive the first time around, so idk if that’s possible without having to install the OS externally.
@@ghost-user559 did not work post install doing it via the finder
I have one 1TB external SSD (named T1) used for anything i don't want to tore on the internal SSD. The other 1TB SSD is for time machine. Would it make sense to partition T1 SSD with another just for Home folder? GREAT INFO good job!!
I’m interested in doing this but before I do so will I be able to use Time Machine to make backups of the external drive and then recover any information using Time Machine?
Yes, Time Machine will go to back up the whole user account I believe but honestly, I use Carbon Copy CLoner CCC. I get my new Mac mini.
I tried this to make this work with an m4 using a hard drive I had been using with my m2.. but unfortunately I had no joy 😪 when I came to opening up the user after moving the home folder etc - it just wouldn’t open back up, hoping the next video you make will solve the problem
I followed your guidance but the original Applications folder is still getting the applications installed to it? It still have the little icon on it. How do it get the app folder over to the new external drive?
Watch my latest video, but you can tell the App Store in the settings to download apps larger than one gig to a specific location like the external hard drive
Could you do a speed test using APFS with encryption? I heard that it severely (not just few hundreds of MB/s) slows down the disk
Yes I will and yes that’s true. But sometimes folks get crazy about hard drive speeds, most apps do not access the drives at nearly the speeds that the drives can operate so it’s more of a slow down when copying data from one drive to another.
@MacSoundSolutions... OBSERVATION: 'Show Library Folder' only appears as a selectable option only in 'as List' view. The option DOES NOT appear if you are viewing as, 'Icons', 'Columns', or 'Gallery'. Great Video! I just purchased the Mac Mini M4 (base model) and watching this video and performing the steps 1 by 1..... (YAY)
Good to know thanks
Is there anyway of doing this with an external ssd that’s in use?? Without erasing it and reformatting? Currently use an ssd as a boot drive for my m2 and want to keep all my data / BitWig projects - sample libraries and plugins as they are 🙏🏻
Nicely done, Sir.
nice tutorial! I'm not a heavy app user (I have Lightroom and Photoshop), my data is already on external storage (I never keep my data on the same storage as the OS, I do it regardless of the OS) but it's nice to know I can go nuclear on the bloat :)
Awsome option. Is there any advantage of this aproach over installing the OS to an exteral boot drive?
You can’t use Apple Intelligence booting off an external drive. That’s really the only downside, but some people might prefer that.
Thanks for the great suggestion! part 1 and 2 have been very helpful. Question: if I wanted to increase the ssd size of my external home folder, should I just copy everything over to the larger storage and make sure the home folder path has the same name? this would also ensure that this fix is sustainable over time.
yes you can just copy it to another drive when your not logged into it then it should copy to another drive, but if your still logged into your apple account and using tthe external home folder on the external drive you most likely will get an error trying to copy it. So that's why one needs to keep internal separate administrator user to log into. I also used time machine and it backed up my user and my internal data with the proper settings.
Hi Lance, I followed the steps and working great but for some reason my downloads keep going to the internal hard drive and I have to move them by hand. Both user names folders (internal and external hard drive) have the apple little signs on the folders so that means that the internal still active some how. The path on the users & groups says my external hd.
Thank you for your work.
THANK YOU! EXCELLENT information and video. You are really providing an incredible service and help to all!!!
Great Videos! Thank you
whoa - well done!!!!!
Outstanding help, thanks
Hey thanks for this concise video, quick question: what would happen if you remove the external SSD (for moving or by accident if it the Mac is completely turned off)? Thanks
@@viwesterboer1326 that’s why you should have a backup user admin account which takes up know space. In case your external is not connected you can still get into the Mac.
Hello this video is really great, one question. is there a way to just use the external harddrive for the heavy mac apps/software. So i can just plug it in when i wanna use that.
Yes any apps that are downloaded can run off the external, some may have data tied to the system so if you plug the user into another Mac they may not load, really depends on the app.
So cool! Thx a lot, man!
Absolutely brilliant! Thanks so much for this!
Wow. ... Thank you
Phenomenal Work!, Just 3 questions, i can't just delete the old home folder in the internal ssd? Why do i have to keep it?, and, Can i open the apps on the external ssd using spotlight? Thank you for this amazing video.
All the preinstalled apps like Safari can't be moved, so you have to keep it the original home folder. But it won't take up much space.
You should be able to delete the internal user as long as you have a second user account with administrative permissions, the applications folder is not part of the use account folder. Going to try this today.
Thanks for this, Lance: it would never have occurred to me to turn off iCloud… However, I got the dreaded ‘-8062’ error when copying the contents of my Home Folder, meaning I couldn’t just walk away and let the Finder do its thing: I had to move folders and sub-folders across individually. I took me around an hour to migrate the Library folder..!!! All working, now, though…. This ‘-8062’ error has been there across Ventura, Sonoma and, now, Sequoia and none of the fixes work. Just got to get an 8TB nVME in the Black Friday sales to house my Home Folder (currently on a 4TB SSD). ETA: I've noticed, however, that the folders in the Sidebar don't have their individual icons on them, now, they're all just generic folders... :0(
Hi Lance,
You mentioned that you can’t have the Time Machine backup on the same disk. However, if you partition the disk (in my case, an NVMe on a Quizzlab hub), I think the system treats it as a separate disk. Could you elaborate on this?
it's a good idea to keep all data you don't want others to have access to in a filevault folder. there are also good third party apps that can help manage multiple folders and drives -- personally i use a third party privacy app on top of my filevault folder for the really important stuff, like ip not yet patented. another thing you should do is get a file shredder app because even though the data from the emptied trash can't be "recovered", it's still there for someone who knows what they're doing to recover -- a shredder app actually overwrites the data with new data 3 times, or more depending on the app.