If you are going to migrate data from another Mac I think this is the best way to go about it. Copy your home folder from your old mac and your Applications folder to the new drive, then attach new drive to new mac and direct it to the external home folder. Attach old mac to new mac and migrate everything but the user folder and applications from the older Mac. Your system settings system library and network settings etc will be migrated no need to migrate the user as it would make a duplicate. I tried it and it worked.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 really appreciate your knowledge and understanding of the Apple environment and how to customise it. Your explanation is exemplary and much appreciated.
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.
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!
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
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!
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.
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 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.
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
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. 😅
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. 😀
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
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
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
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.
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.
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?
Very helpful video. But what I don't understand is why you can't, or perhaps shouldn't, simply delete the entire now redundant home folder from the main drive?
You can as long as you have the backup internal user / administrator. I didn’t have time to try this but I will today because I have to return the M1 studio I was lent.
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!
I found that a symlink of the external drive's "Applications" folder, placed inside the ~[username] folder on the external drive, automatically updates Launchpad to display new apps installed on the external drive. In my testing, the App Store app browser did not recognize apps from the Store that were manually copied into the external drive's "Applications" folder. Redownloading those apps from the App Store solved that problem.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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 🙏🏻
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.
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
thanks for the clear instruction. I am very curious whether a complete installation on an external SSD is a good alternative. You then have a clean installation and make the external SSD the boot drive. I don't see any disadvantages myself and I'm curious to see how others see it
Thanks for this video, Lance. All went well until I tried to delete the apps from the internal ssd (Macintosh HD). I selected all of the files in the Application folder on the internal drive and I had no 'delete' or 'move to trash' options. I tried with a known app that I added (e.g., a Brother label printer app) and it did not allow me to delete it, even after I authenticated with my local password. I got a warning to check to see if I had access and I had read and write, but no delete access. I only have three non-system apps on the my internal(startup) SSD, but it concerns me that there is an access or permissions problem. Any suggestions? Otherwise the home folder migration appears to have worked fine.
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!!
If you have multiple users on your computer you should be aware of the “Ignore ownership on this volume” setting that appears at the bottom of a Get Info window for the APFS external drive. I’m not expert but I think you should disable this option to mimic the privileges of the internal system drive.
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.
As a soon to be first Mac user who is going to buy the newest Mac Mini and considering doing a process such as this, if I unplug the external drive from the Mac mini and plug it back to the Mac mini are there any steps I might need to do for the Mac mini to recognize the external drive again, or after I plug the external drive back the mini will immediately be able to (not sure the words…), access? Connect? And see everything? Thank you for these videos very much. They are so easy to follow and also learn from. Thank you for your time.
@@JarradShaw if the mini is powered off no issue. But if you want to power up the mini without the home folder connected you need to login to the backup internal user account which I show how to set that up in the video. I will be posting another video soon as I just got my mini yesterday.
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.
After moving the home folder, What about audio plugins, and other mac installers that only allow installing to the main Library folder, not user Library?
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
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?
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 :)
I have a bit of a weird situation, in that I booted my old Mac mini from an external drive, and now I’m trying to move to my new 256gb Mac mini. I tried following your instructions in the last video, but now I’m stuck trying to figure out how to get the data from my old Mac to the new 😵💫
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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(
For the external drive security, did you try formatting with APFS (encrypted) instead of just APFS? I seem to recall seeing that option in the drop down but just going by memory so not 100% sure. Also, haven’t tried it myself so just an idea for you to consider in case you haven’t already. Great 2 videos though, thank you!
How to manage your applications on your external drive: Create a folder at the root of your home folder and name it "Applications" (ExtDrive/Users/MyHomeFolder/Applications). Exactly as Apple names it. You should see the folder icon change to indicate it is recognized as an application folder by macOS. All apps inside this folder should appear in Launchpad. Be aware that some apps will lose functionalities or not work at all if moved out of original installation folder (/Applications). As an example, Amphetamine, the keep-awake utility will not autostart if moved.
Thanks a lot. I have a problem with Photoshop, it keep crashing. I deleted it and install it another time. It go always to the previous Application folder (Mac mini) , and it also keep crashing. I change the home folder back to his original location without success. Any help?
Will I always see my external hard drive symbol on the homepage if I follow your steps? Can it be hidden. Also, what happens if I accidentally pull the hard drive cable out of the Mac mini?
OK, now I have done it, and have transferred my Home folder to my Samsung 990 Evo 2TB external drive. I ran into a couple of snags so I hope my experience can help others who hit the same problem. Step 1 threw up the first snag: I couldn't turn off Photos in iCloud - this message appeared: "Open Photos to disable iCloud Photo Library The Photos app was recently updated. Open Photos to update your library before disabling iCloud Photo Library". Opening Photos had no effect, and I couldn't quickly find a solution online so I just went ahead and closed everything else.I was then able to carry on with the succeeding steps. The next snag happened at Step 3 - I couldn't copy my Home directory in one move because I got the message that it needed to be downloaded first. That may have been related to my inability to turn off Photos in iCloud. Anyway, I resorted to creating a new folder on the external drive to hold my transferred Home folder items and then dragging individual folders from the internal Home folder to this folder on my external drive. Most just copied across but the Library folder caused issues so I created a new external Library folder and went through the same process, copying individual folders from the internal Library folder to the new one. Again, some didn't copy and again I created new, empty folders with the same name inside the external Library folder, without trying to copy the contents - I still have the internal folders in case of issues later. I didn't try to copy the Caches folder, just created a new external folder as the cache files are temporary. When I reached Step 5, the Photos issue raised its ugly head again. I was able to select the new location for the Home folder on the external drive but when I went to restart, I found myself in an endless loop where I was being asked again to disable iCloud Photo Library before the mini would restart. I solved that by force quitting System Preferences, worrying that this would affect the change of location of the Home folder (it didn't). After that, all went as planned and iCloud is now downloading things into the new folder on the external drive. I haven't moved my Applications folder yet, or deleted the internal Home folder, until I'm sure everything is working correctly. I'm optimistic, though!
So what happens when you do this Home and Application folder change and then you use the Migration Assistant to copy data from an older Mac? Won't the Migration Assistant override the Home Folder location? Seems problematic?
Best way is to copy your home folder from your old mac to the new drive, then attach new drive to new mac and direct it to the external home folder then attach old mac to new mac and migrate everything but the user folder. Your system settings and network settings etc will be migrated no need to migrate the user.
Make sure all iCloud apps are off and you are logged out of your Apple Account. Another work around that might work is creat an internal backup administrator user and then log into it, then try copying the home folder of the main account you want to move.
M4 Mac Mini Problem(sorry if this already covered in comments)Error message on copy and paste Home folder: This operation can’t be completed because “‘my user name’” needs to be downloaded. Suggestions? Thanks
So in step 8, since the user home folder was copied, is there any reason not to simply delete the original user folder? seems you left yours, so just wondering why you left it at all?
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.
I am a future new MAC user (after 30 years of Windows). I'm waiting for the delivery of my M4 Mac Mini and am passing the waiting time with videos like yours. Since I only have rudimentary knowledge of MacOS, forgive me if my 2 questions sound stupid. 1. if you pay for enough iCloud space, then there's not necessarily a need to go that route, right? I realize that this has disadvantages for performance if content has to be loaded from the iCloud first. I would just like to understand whether I am right in my assumption or have overlooked something. 2. would it not also be possible to outsource certain very large directories and set a symbolic link in the home folder? Then the space would not be occupied on the internal SSD, but the system would be bootable without it. It would just not be possible to access the data. This is how I did it under Windows to keep my system drive as free as possible. Would that also be an option?
Everything iCloud base gets stored locally so big iCloud account means big drive space but you can set some things like photos to not keep originals on the device and download them when needed. and yes you can create symlinks to point certain things to be stored externally. I do that with my iOS backups so they don’t get stored internally on my Mac Pro along with photo library’s etc.
@@MacSoundSolutions Thanks a lot for clarifying. So symlinks could be a a cautious entry into the outsourcing of larger content without completely relocating the entire home folder. Good to know.
Hey Lance thanks again for this? Just out of interest? What mac mini configuration are you getting? My guess us your going for base model mac mini M4, 256 and then 32gb RAM? I might do the same but might get 512 as heard those run faster than the 256. Thanks again for video! Brilliant! New subs here too! 🙌
I don't think is a matter of SSD speed here. The point is that you need to keep some disk free ALWAYS. If you plan to go for 512 maybe you are good to go moving only home folder ion external drive, so you can create a backup acocunt and in case of issues you can boot from there.
@@MacSoundSolutions I just saw some other reviews where the speed of the SSD was slower on the 256, the read/write, well I bit the bullet in the end and bought a base pro model, probably over kill, but should have it a good few years, good for 3d cinema stuff too! Got 4tb crucial nvme and Acasis enclosure. Hopefully that will be a good upgrade from 2018 MBP 🙌
@@MacSoundSolutions oh nice one, yeah that's cool you can have two SSD in there nice! Be interesting too see that video! Mac mini M4 should be here tomorrow! Just learnt I can connect my iPad upp it as a mini monitor too 🤣🙌
What I would really like to know is if there’s any way to move the folder with the Apple video screensavers to an external drive. I made the mistake of enabling all of them in Sonoma. Now they won’t stop downloading, even after I delete them from the system folder! They just keep re-downloading, even though they’re not selected as the screen saver. Close to 40 GB of space in there!
Why not format the drive in "APFS encrypted"? This will require a password to access external drive contents every time the drive is plugged in. You can easily store the drive's password in the mac's password keychain so you don't have to retype the password in on your authorized device.
Thank you! Have a question on the sequence. My existing MacBook Pro laptop has my photoshop application to multiple years of turbotax desktop taxes. Want to save and move them all seamlessly with paths intact. Should I use this second part video to externalize these applications ? Goal is to move it all to the Mac mini I just got and to use user files externally. Planning on adding a dedicated disk for time machine backups in the mini for the internal and main external storage drives.
Best to use apples migration tool but if your MacBook Pro is intel you will may some issues with apps and need to reinstall them or update your apps so it could be a bit tricky.😅 you can try copying the MacBook Pro‘s user account onto the external drive and then make that user active on the new computer and move any necessary files however that you need instead of using the migration tool, but if you use the migration tool, you wanna have the new user account set up on the MINI first so it migrates the data to the external drive.
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.
I would still go with a minimum of 512GB of internal storage. It's much faster than the 256GB and you'll get less wear and tear during memory swapping. There is also a Kickstarter where they are going to be producing cheaper options for the M4 MM.
Not with the new mini, the 256 is also a raide 0 so speeds are the same. You might get slightly better speeds with the one terabyte option. The M4 pro has faster speeds than the M4
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If you are going to migrate data from another Mac I think this is the best way to go about it. Copy your home folder from your old mac and your Applications folder to the new drive, then attach new drive to new mac and direct it to the external home folder. Attach old mac to new mac and migrate everything but the user folder and applications from the older Mac. Your system settings system library and network settings etc will be migrated no need to migrate the user as it would make a duplicate. I tried it and it worked.
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?
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.
When someone knows what they are talking about, it shows! Thank you!
I prefer your advice rather than those advices from so-called tech reviewers.
💯👍👍👍
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.
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.
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 really appreciate your knowledge and understanding of the Apple environment and how to customise it. Your explanation is exemplary and much appreciated.
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.
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!
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
Probably the most useful video for a long long time
Thanks!
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!
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.
Thanks for a great video. Curious … would there be any special steps necessary when installing a MacOS update?
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 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
Brilliant guide and thanks for the coupon code. The enclosure was already on sale and with your code was an affordable £76.28
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
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. 😅
Great info! I appreciate the time you took to post this.
Thanks Greg!
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. 😀
THANK YOU! EXCELLENT information and video. You are really providing an incredible service and help to all!!!
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
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 😅
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
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?
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.
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?
Very helpful video. But what I don't understand is why you can't, or perhaps shouldn't, simply delete the entire now redundant home folder from the main drive?
You can as long as you have the backup internal user / administrator. I didn’t have time to try this but I will today because I have to return the M1 studio I was lent.
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!
I found that a symlink of the external drive's "Applications" folder, placed inside the ~[username] folder on the external drive, automatically updates Launchpad to display new apps installed on the external drive.
In my testing, the App Store app browser did not recognize apps from the Store that were manually copied into the external drive's "Applications" folder. Redownloading those apps from the App Store solved that problem.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
Thank you so much! Bookmarked, and I'll take it out when the time comes. 🙏 🤘🏼
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 🙏🏻
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
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
thanks for the clear instruction. I am very curious whether a complete installation on an external SSD is a good alternative. You then have a clean installation and make the external SSD the boot drive. I don't see any disadvantages myself and I'm curious to see how others see it
Apple intelligence won’t work if you boot off the external drive. That may change in the future as it’s still in beta.
Thanks for this video, Lance. All went well until I tried to delete the apps from the internal ssd (Macintosh HD). I selected all of the files in the Application folder on the internal drive and I had no 'delete' or 'move to trash' options. I tried with a known app that I added (e.g., a Brother label printer app) and it did not allow me to delete it, even after I authenticated with my local password. I got a warning to check to see if I had access and I had read and write, but no delete access. I only have three non-system apps on the my internal(startup) SSD, but it concerns me that there is an access or permissions problem.
Any suggestions?
Otherwise the home folder migration appears to have worked fine.
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!!
If you have multiple users on your computer you should be aware of the “Ignore ownership on this volume” setting that appears at the bottom of a Get Info window for the APFS external drive. I’m not expert but I think you should disable this option to mimic the privileges of the internal system drive.
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.
As a soon to be first Mac user who is going to buy the newest Mac Mini and considering doing a process such as this, if I unplug the external drive from the Mac mini and plug it back to the Mac mini are there any steps I might need to do for the Mac mini to recognize the external drive again, or after I plug the external drive back the mini will immediately be able to (not sure the words…), access? Connect? And see everything? Thank you for these videos very much. They are so easy to follow and also learn from. Thank you for your time.
@@JarradShaw if the mini is powered off no issue. But if you want to power up the mini without the home folder connected you need to login to the backup internal user account which I show how to set that up in the video. I will be posting another video soon as I just got my mini yesterday.
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.
Is there any downside to completely deleting the User folder from the internal disk after making sure there’s no problems?
Thanks for this video, made a big difference to the space on my mac devices.
After moving the home folder, What about audio plugins, and other mac installers that only allow installing to the main Library folder, not user Library?
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
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.
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 :)
I have a bit of a weird situation, in that I booted my old Mac mini from an external drive, and now I’m trying to move to my new 256gb Mac mini. I tried following your instructions in the last video, but now I’m stuck trying to figure out how to get the data from my old Mac to the new 😵💫
You need to connect the old mini to the new and migrate your data using apples migration tool. You need to put the old mini in target disk mode.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks, Lance! I look forward to moving my home folder as soon as I get a suitable drive. BTW, what happens to Homebrew paclages?
Great Videos! Thank you
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.
What kind of monitors do you have?
Thanks for sharing all this information. Amazing stuff. Cheers
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
Thank you for your work.
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(
super.. i watched part 1 and was patiently waiting for part 2 ;)
For the external drive security, did you try formatting with APFS (encrypted) instead of just APFS? I seem to recall seeing that option in the drop down but just going by memory so not 100% sure. Also, haven’t tried it myself so just an idea for you to consider in case you haven’t already. Great 2 videos though, thank you!
How to manage your applications on your external drive:
Create a folder at the root of your home folder and name it "Applications" (ExtDrive/Users/MyHomeFolder/Applications). Exactly as Apple names it. You should see the folder icon change to indicate it is recognized as an application folder by macOS. All apps inside this folder should appear in Launchpad. Be aware that some apps will lose functionalities or not work at all if moved out of original installation folder (/Applications). As an example, Amphetamine, the keep-awake utility will not autostart if moved.
Thanks a lot. I have a problem with Photoshop, it keep crashing. I deleted it and install it another time. It go always to the previous Application folder (Mac mini) , and it also keep crashing. I change the home folder back to his original location without success. Any help?
Will I always see my external hard drive symbol on the homepage if I follow your steps? Can it be hidden. Also, what happens if I accidentally pull the hard drive cable out of the Mac mini?
OK, now I have done it, and have transferred my Home folder to my Samsung 990 Evo 2TB external drive. I ran into a couple of snags so I hope my experience can help others who hit the same problem.
Step 1 threw up the first snag: I couldn't turn off Photos in iCloud - this message appeared: "Open Photos to disable iCloud Photo Library
The Photos app was recently updated. Open Photos to update your library before disabling iCloud Photo Library".
Opening Photos had no effect, and I couldn't quickly find a solution online so I just went ahead and closed everything else.I was then able to carry on with the succeeding steps.
The next snag happened at Step 3 - I couldn't copy my Home directory in one move because I got the message that it needed to be downloaded first. That may have been related to my inability to turn off Photos in iCloud. Anyway, I resorted to creating a new folder on the external drive to hold my transferred Home folder items and then dragging individual folders from the internal Home folder to this folder on my external drive. Most just copied across but the Library folder caused issues so I created a new external Library folder and went through the same process, copying individual folders from the internal Library folder to the new one. Again, some didn't copy and again I created new, empty folders with the same name inside the external Library folder, without trying to copy the contents - I still have the internal folders in case of issues later. I didn't try to copy the Caches folder, just created a new external folder as the cache files are temporary.
When I reached Step 5, the Photos issue raised its ugly head again. I was able to select the new location for the Home folder on the external drive but when I went to restart, I found myself in an endless loop where I was being asked again to disable iCloud Photo Library before the mini would restart. I solved that by force quitting System Preferences, worrying that this would affect the change of location of the Home folder (it didn't).
After that, all went as planned and iCloud is now downloading things into the new folder on the external drive. I haven't moved my Applications folder yet, or deleted the internal Home folder, until I'm sure everything is working correctly. I'm optimistic, though!
So what happens when you do this Home and Application folder change and then you use the Migration Assistant to copy data from an older Mac? Won't the Migration Assistant override the Home Folder location? Seems problematic?
Best way is to copy your home folder from your old mac to the new drive, then attach new drive to new mac and direct it to the external home folder then attach old mac to new mac and migrate everything but the user folder. Your system settings and network settings etc will be migrated no need to migrate the user.
So what’s the best external hdd is better?
When I copy my home folder to the external drive it fails and stops due to no access to a file or two. Any way to overcome this problem?
Make sure all iCloud apps are off and you are logged out of your Apple
Account. Another work around that might work is creat an internal backup administrator user and then log into it, then try copying the home folder of the main account you want to move.
Same issue, unable to solve by creating an internal backup administrator.
M4 Mac Mini Problem(sorry if this already covered in comments)Error message on copy and paste Home folder: This operation can’t be completed because “‘my user name’” needs to be downloaded. Suggestions? Thanks
So in step 8, since the user home folder was copied, is there any reason not to simply delete the original user folder? seems you left yours, so just wondering why you left it at all?
Man! It was a life changer video! Thanks!!!
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.
I am a future new MAC user (after 30 years of Windows). I'm waiting for the delivery of my M4 Mac Mini and am passing the waiting time with videos like yours. Since I only have rudimentary knowledge of MacOS, forgive me if my 2 questions sound stupid.
1. if you pay for enough iCloud space, then there's not necessarily a need to go that route, right?
I realize that this has disadvantages for performance if content has to be loaded from the iCloud first. I would just like to understand whether I am right in my assumption or have overlooked something.
2. would it not also be possible to outsource certain very large directories and set a symbolic link in the home folder? Then the space would not be occupied on the internal SSD, but the system would be bootable without it. It would just not be possible to access the data. This is how I did it under Windows to keep my system drive as free as possible. Would that also be an option?
Everything iCloud base gets stored locally so big iCloud account means big drive space but you can set some things like photos to not keep originals on the device and download them when needed. and yes you can create symlinks to point certain things to be stored externally. I do that with my iOS backups so they don’t get stored internally on my Mac Pro along with photo library’s etc.
@@MacSoundSolutions Thanks a lot for clarifying. So symlinks could be a a cautious entry into the outsourcing of larger content without completely relocating the entire home folder. Good to know.
I can't get that SSD as it's apparently sold out. Is there another one that will work with this inclosure?
Thank you for this great tutorial.
Absolutely brilliant! Thanks so much for this!
How did you delete the apps in the Applications folder? I cannot drag them to the trash.
way to go Lance. i did aswell :D on my mac mini M4
So can I run windows virtual machine on this external drive? Don't have a Mac yet but waiting for Amazon to ship mine.
thanks!
Hey Lance thanks again for this? Just out of interest? What mac mini configuration are you getting? My guess us your going for base model mac mini M4, 256 and then 32gb RAM? I might do the same but might get 512 as heard those run faster than the 256. Thanks again for video! Brilliant! New subs here too! 🙌
As far as I know the 256 is also a raid 0 and is as fast as the 512.
I don't think is a matter of
SSD speed here. The point is that you need to keep some disk free ALWAYS. If you plan to go for 512 maybe you are good to go moving only home folder ion external drive, so you can create a backup acocunt and in case of issues you can boot from there.
@@MacSoundSolutions I just saw some other reviews where the speed of the SSD was slower on the 256, the read/write, well I bit the bullet in the end and bought a base pro model, probably over kill, but should have it a good few years, good for 3d cinema stuff too! Got 4tb crucial nvme and Acasis enclosure. Hopefully that will be a good upgrade from 2018 MBP 🙌
@ nice I just got the dual NVMe / hub by ACASIS can’t wait to test it.
@@MacSoundSolutions oh nice one, yeah that's cool you can have two SSD in there nice! Be interesting too see that video! Mac mini M4 should be here tomorrow! Just learnt I can connect my iPad upp it as a mini monitor too 🤣🙌
What are you condidering bumping the RAM to?
I didn’t I went with 16 to put the base model to the test but if it were to be my main computer I would get 24 or 32.
How do you now backup your external drive since Time Machine won’t work?
It works fine, you need a second external drive and to remove the new home drive from the list of ignored drives in the Time Machine settings
Thx for the great tutorials
Greetings from the Netherlands...
👍👊💪
What I would really like to know is if there’s any way to move the folder with the Apple video screensavers to an external drive. I made the mistake of enabling all of them in Sonoma. Now they won’t stop downloading, even after I delete them from the system folder! They just keep re-downloading, even though they’re not selected as the screen saver. Close to 40 GB of space in there!
I saw on another YT clip that the 256 GB mini has much slower read/write speeds than the 512 GB one.
Not on the new m4 non pro mini the 256 and 512 are the same speeds the M4 pro is twice as fast as the M4 base model.
Outstanding help, thanks
Why not format the drive in "APFS encrypted"? This will require a password to access external drive contents every time the drive is plugged in. You can easily store the drive's password in the mac's password keychain so you don't have to retype the password in on your authorized device.
Have to try it I usually don’t encrypt
Thanks a lot for the tips. Great.
Is there a way to have TimeMachine backing up this external SSD Home folder?
Yes you have to remove it from the ignore this device list when you first setup Time Machine then it backups the internal and the external.
Awesome. Thank you! You can maybe this step in your video with the Mac Mini M4
Thank you! Have a question on the sequence. My existing MacBook Pro laptop has my photoshop application to multiple years of turbotax desktop taxes. Want to save and move them all seamlessly with paths intact. Should I use this second part video to externalize these applications ? Goal is to move it all to the Mac mini I just got and to use user files externally. Planning on adding a dedicated disk for time machine backups in the mini for the internal and main external storage drives.
Best to use apples migration tool but if your MacBook Pro is intel you will may some issues with apps and need to reinstall them or update your apps so it could be a bit tricky.😅 you can try copying the MacBook Pro‘s user account onto the external drive and then make that user active on the new computer and move any necessary files however that you need instead of using the migration tool, but if you use the migration tool, you wanna have the new user account set up on the MINI first so it migrates the data to the external drive.
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.
I would still go with a minimum of 512GB of internal storage. It's much faster than the 256GB and you'll get less wear and tear during memory swapping. There is also a Kickstarter where they are going to be producing cheaper options for the M4 MM.
Not with the new mini, the 256 is also a raide 0 so speeds are the same. You might get slightly better speeds with the one terabyte option. The M4 pro has faster speeds than the M4