I’m a recently retired engineer. Your explanations, unlike so many others, are easy to understand and make sense. Keep up the great work. I’m now a subscriber (i.e. fan) of yours.
Awesome, I moved all data and applications from my Macbook Pro M3 Pro to my new Mac Mini M4, and it went smooth. Happy Holidays from Durango, Mexico. BTW you're the man
Great series of "how to" on the Mac Mini M4. Followed the first videos, and ran into issues with the migration assistance. Found the hard way that MA only works on internal drive. I also had over 256GB in my user id, so migration was clearly a problem. Finally got it all working by partially selection my USER ID folders in MA, once migrated to the internal disk, moved that USER information to the external drive, and THEN used TIME MACHINE to fill in the remainder of the data needed for the USER. I liked this version of yours, since it is much clearer and a bit more simple. My migration effort took over 8 hours. Very excellent work.
Great work, thank you very much🥰 As a first time Mac user and now a mini owner your videos has help me an enormous amount. Have a great weekend and go slow on the coffee 😉 Best regards from Sweden
Hey, Lans. Look, something fantastic happened. I transferred my home and application folders to a new SSD. Then I formatted the internal SSD and reinstalled macOS using another external SSD I created. Then I used the command line step you indicated in your earlier video and logged in using my iCloud account. Here's the cool part. Every app I owned continued to function normally. Without having to set up each one individually. I suppose it is due to all the existing user settings from the previous format. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I didn't even need to use Time Machine to restore old settings. Everything is working perfectly. Thank you for the great videos.
@@digitalage2010 that is a bit odd which command line are you referring to in which video, I’m a bit baffled. The home user folder stores a lot of your app settings but not the things that are stored in the system library’s.
Explain!! Did you transferred the home and application folders from your old Mac device onto the new external SSD? What command line from which video did you use?
used terminal to be able to add home folder to X SSD but then I don’tknow what i did. restarted my mac mini m4 and it won’t let log in anymore plus i get white lego with error home folder not found. Can any one help i just bought my mac2 2 days ago
@ disconnect the external drive and try to boot again. If you can’t get in hold the power button when booting up the mini until you see the recovery screen if you see Macintosh HD you can try to boot from it again, if it won’t boot go into recovery mode again after shutting downs hold the power button and reinstall macOS on the internal drive don’t have your external drive connected and start over. Always have a back up user account and set that up first so you can always get into the computer then set up the external user.
Thanks yet again Lance, the tutorial was a bit more complicated (for me) than the previous tutorials in this series, and because I don't use Time Machine (I use Carbon Copy Cloner), I shall watch the video again, and also print out the comments which are very useful. I'm trying to remember where I saw the instructions on making the External SSD bootable !!!! Get well soon Matey, and thanks again. - 🚙☕
@@billyyoung234 you can just boot into recovery mode and it’ll say reinstall macOS just make sure to select the external drive for the install location your drive should be formatted in APFS GUID partition.
@@MacSoundSolutions --- so Lance, does this work on an existing external SSD which has already got data on it, it won't overwrite everything, sorry for my naivety ? !
@@billyyoung234 yes you can migrate the data from the time machine to the internal drive but skip the home folder, you can copy the home folder from the time machine backup to your external drive and copy the needed data into your active external home folder.
@ no it won’t erase anything you can also add a APFS container on the drive for the home folder which does not reformat the drive just allocate the amount of space you want to use and you can have your other data and the home folder with apps separated into two mountable drives / containers. But you don’t have to do that, if you just want to have it all on the same drive, but if the drive is not already formatted in APFS then you will have to add a APFS container if it’s formatted in exfat. But best to have the whole drive formatted in APFS GUID partition.
Hi….i bought the Mac mini pro with an enclosure and 4TB card…..oh….this video is what I need. External drive….but how do I get my old iMac over to my Home Screen…..I’ll watch this video as I just subscribed. Took me time to find you…
Thank you first of all for your videos, i'm a bit new to all this and find your instructions very helpful. However i'm a bit confused. I already set up my external hard drive as per your other video. Why can't i just do the apple migration to my new mac, then just transfer photos etc to my external. Will the migration wipeout my external setup? My old mac only has about 158 GB to transfer and a lot are older software that will not run on my new mac. This just seems like a lot of extra work that in my situation I may not need to do.
Around 8:00 in the video, he explains that Migration Assistant will want to migrate to an internal drive, not an external drive. Hence the extra steps of using Migration Assistant to migrate all but the user folder, then copying from the internal to the external drive all the stuff that Migration Assistant moved. Note that if one actually sets up the external drive as the StartUp Drive then one can indeed use Migration Assistant to move stuff to that external drive. But as Apple has made Apple Intelligence not work with external boots most people are going to no longer use external Start Up drives. And I suspect going forward Apple will eventually drop the external Start Up capability. Even now with the M-series Macs the internal storage is the boot device, even if MacOS is set up to continue the Start Up process using an external device.
@@TheDanEdwards Thanks but im not using the external as a boot. Still my question remains. Can i just still do migration and worry about transfer files(not much in my case) manually and will it have any impact on my external drive set up?
It won’t affect the external. In that case, you can just connect your external home drive to your old Mac and copy over your main user home folder. If it’s got the same name, you can change it and then move whatever you need off of it into the proper locations. Migration tool copies everything into the internal drive so if you migrate to the internal drive, you’re then gonna have to move everything again so it’s probably easier just to plug-in your new external user drive into the old Mac copy the user folder and then put things where you need them into the external user folder. icloud photo lybrarys can be a bit tricky and you have to tell your mac where you want your "system" photo library to be you can merge the photos from your old library to the new external one. I keep one smaller system photo library for icloud photos and a much larger library for all my non cloud photos, then I move cloud to non cloud when the icloud starts to get full.
At 15:52 you say, definitely watch "Move your Home folder to an external drive, PART 2" because it's got "some information" that's not on this video. Hmmm? That video used an entirely different approach -- no Migration Assistant. But then there's a hastily-written "update" in your pinned comment under the video that uses Migration Assistant. So, specifically WHAT information?
@@GarrettBane That’s my secret little trick actually all you have to do is select the drive on the desktop and hit “command i” it opens up the information window on the drive and the little icon in the upper left-hand corner is changeable on any folder or any drive as long as you have permission. you copy the icon you want to use to replace it by opening the new icon in Apple preview app, hit select all and hit copy so it’s in the finder clipboard the icon mage has to be a PNG file and it has to be small and you just paste it into the tiny little box in the info box that you first opened of the drive. And. bingo new icon!
@@hogajar4444 you can boot into recovery install the OS on an external drive without erasing it on the internal, format your drive in GUID APFS. Make sure to select the external drive as to the location the OS it’s an option at the beginning of the install.
Hi thanks for your videos they are very informative... just a bit of clarifiaction .. I followed your previous video on how to use external drive as memory drive ... if I follow all those steps then take the External and plug it into the old imac .. then transfer everything that I want from the IMAC to the correct folders on the External and then replug the external back into the Mac Mini will that work? Dont really want to use any internal memory on the imac then having to remove and delete things. Thanks for your advice and help
It should be fine I would creat a new folder on the external call it iMac files and put everything in it from the iMac then connect it back to the new Mac and transfer things into the external folders then and do it gradually and check things out as you go rather than just move it all at once into the external folders
Great tutorial Lance! Worked for me. I’m a power user of Spotlight and not having that feature on the external drive is very disappointing. What’s the point of having a huge external drive if I can’t search through 1000’s of files for what I’m looking for? Yeah, I can gloat for not paying the Apple tax but Apple gets the last laugh with a dysfunctional Spotlight.
Really great and clear explanation! One question, though. I have two users on my current computer (an Intel-based iMac). Should I copy every user as you explain to the external drive and then repeat the procedure as shown in the video?
@@iThunder66 yes but first and I want to add this for multi users, you should creat a “User” folder on the external first then add each account activating each one external drive/userfolder/users
Lance I have a question. I’m copying my backup from my older system to the external. There are a lot files there. Do I have to migrate data over from migration assistant ? Is it copying the same material ? And do I have to name the user folder the same with a new account. I already set up a new in account. I bought a new Mac Studio. Something went wrong the first time so I’m doing it again. Thanks for your videos.
@@musicstudynetwork Yes migration of your data to the internal but not the home as I show in the video is the way to go and copy the home folder to the external then activate it. Keeping the same user name is a good idea in this case. And make sure to have a backup.
I found your video too late and overpaid for my storage. I needed the Mac mini because my 2015 iMac went. I have Time Machine backups but the iMac was running Big Sur. What problems will I run into with my migration when I get my Mac mini? Ps. Love your channel. Wish I found it sooner!!
You have 14 days from day of delivery to return it. I would start from scratch because you are going from intel to Apple Silicon. Best to create the external home folder on the mini like I show in my earlier videos and log into iCloud and all your iCloud data will install onto the external home folder drive. Best to be connected via Ethernet not Wi-Fi. I think if you try and migrate your Intel info to the Apple Silicon, you’re gonna run into issues because it’s gonna write things into the system folders, copy apps that won’t run etc. Best to start clean and reinstall all your non-Apple apps and you can attach the external drive to your old computer and just copy any files or data that you wanna move to the new computer onto it without using migration tool that might be the best way to go just not sure how Time Machine and migration will deal with this transition from the old Intel Mac to Apple Silicon. You can always try it but it might be more headache that way.
A bit confused by this. I’ve already set up a use with home folder on my external drive. What I want to do is get the contents of my old Mac’s home folder into the home folder of the user on my Mac mini that already has a home folder in place. In other words I don’t want to create a user on the mini with the name as the user on my old Mac. Is that possible? FYI I’ll be using carbon copy cloner for all this not Time Machine. I have instructions from ccc support how to do that via migration assistant.
Just ordered the Mac mini a few days ago. Been looking around for a dual enclosure. Found one by Orico with Thunderbolt 4. Is it a must to get Thunderbolt-capable ones? Another option is the Dual-NVME but with 10Gbps rated model.
Thunderbolt is faster so I think that is preferable and be aware some enclosures can have issues with random ejects. Best to have a single solid enclosure dedicated to the home folder.
Have you experienced any temperature issues with the Zika case? I am reading reports on Slickdeals claiming that these drives get hotter than normal due to the MacOS not letting them go into low power mode.
It gets warm not super hot for me, all NVMe cases get warm so far it’s been super solid, time will tell. I am not able to sleep the computer though and I tend to not do that anyway and the mini when the screen is off and the drive is not being used as in just parked it is not running hot at all, also depends a lot on what NVMe you use. One thing I really like about it is if you have static electricity on you and you touch it it doesn’t eject like some other drives do that only have metal cases? It has not had one issue as far as ejecting goes. I was able to sleep the computer with the Mac Studio when I was using it with that.
Great videos Lance! I've almost got it figured out. I have two questions. 1) is there a way to know if an application needs to stay on the internal drive because it's shared? Is the only way to know, by dragging it to the external and testing it? I am having problems with Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. I've tried opening them on both drives and neither work the way they should. I'm wondering if opening them on each drive to test has somehow screwed things up? 2)The application folder that I've copied on my external and dragged apps into, does not have the little etched in "A" on the folder. The one on the internal does. Do I have to link them? does it matter? Thanks again, FD
I have been playing with this, seems Apple wants an applications folder outside of the user folder to download App Store apps to that are over 1 gig, but other apps and launchpad want the app folder inside the user folder. I created a sym link of the applications folder after moving it inside the user folder, when it’s in there it gets the A icon on the folder, I then put the sym link outside the user folder while having the app folder in the user folder and so far that’s working well. I don’t use adobe apps since they went sub only, but looks like it installs apps in the individual user account that being said it also installs files in the system library like fonts and plugins. That’s all I got the moment but will be making a sym link video soon.
I am running into an issue. I've made it through the time machine restore. I've moved files to the applications folder on my external drive, verified they work from there, but I can't remove them from the internal drive. I am not sure what the issue is. I get some error about the files being 'locked', but I've checked that, and they are not. Any ideas?
I have abandoned the 256 GB Mac mini for the 512 GB. It seems they are just way too many issues with file references that are incorrectly being referenced due to having the external Home folder location, as well as trying to move the applications there.
I found problems after transferring the user to an external SSD. The iStat application does not work - nothing appears in the top menu bar. The Scoop application opens an empty window instead of media file information. Another program cannot install a user agent. That is, the system does not work quite correctly, although many applications work as usual. And if you log in from a user with a home folder on the internal SSD, these non-working programs start working.
@@dlquddh7 you need a second drive other than the time machine drive To be your external home Drive and just follow the video basically you’re just gonna copy your home folder from your time machine back up to the new external drive and then activate that home folder and you can migrate the rest of your data to the system as I show in the video
Of corse you can do that but it’s nice to have all your stuff in one location and some apps like games can take up a huge amount of your internal space.
Hi Lance, How long did the migration take? I ask because I transferred all my hard drive on an iMac Pro (Late 2015) to an iMac Pro (2022) with 1TB SSD and it took a day and a half to transfer. I used Time Machine to do it. And this was before I watched both of your videos. I did sign in to my account and iCloud like you said not to - but I only went internal to internal to swap. Thanks! I love your presentation style, easy to follow. Gianni❤
For me it only took a few minutes but I only had about 150 gigs, if it’s a terabyte it should take quite a while but that seems really long. But if you have a huge photo library and tons of little files it could take some time but both computers have SSDs so seems a bit long but honestly I have not used TimeMachine that much.
If you use any of apples iCloud services or backup your iPhone, to your Mac all this data normally goes to your internal drive with the external home folder all your iCloud data and photos etc will go to your external user folder instead of using your internal drives space.
Do you see full functionality on the external user folder? When I do it, Spotlight and some Finder features don’t work with the external drive or don’t sync with iCloud Drive. I’m trying to learn if it’s a consistent problem with Apple’s implementation or random quirk with my account.
@ Whew! Finally someone confirming they see the same issue! Thanks! Yes, that’s what I’ve found playing with this the past two weeks. Related, Tags feature in Finder doesn’t work either (I assume because it’s based on Spotlight). Spotlight not working with the iCloud Drive makes this all completely useless to anyone who uses iCloud Drive Documents and Folder sync. I put more time than I should have trying to figure it out. But after multiple attempts, I’ve given up on external User Folder. Hopefully someone will find a solution. Or maybe Apple will fix the bug in a 15.x update.
@@ShoutingMan I've seen the same. Spent a lot of time trying to fix this also. No luck so far. Another issue I noticed is the Passwords app doesn't insert passwords at all. Any one else notice this? It is also constantly locked and I have to type my user password to unlock, then copy the password out manually.
I’m not sure what I did but my system is a mess. Halfway through my time machine was unplugged so there were two folders with the same name. After everything was done I have apps in both internal and external drive. It’s very confusing. I might just start over
@@musicstudynetwork you can just delete all apps in the internal app folder the system apps will remain, but unplugging when data is transferring is not great.
If you do this, how do backup/restores work? Lets say your mac mini dies, and you are left with your home folder on an external, can this just be hooked up to a new mac mini, and be off and running with the external home easily linked to a new mini? Or can you reinstall everything from a Time Machine backup of your dead mini, and the still alive external? Has anyone done tried either of these to see if there are any issues? These questions HAVE to be answered before anyone can do this project with any confidence they have a backup. Otherwise, you're taking a very big gamble with all your data. My big decision is: do this? Or take the easier route, and put my large files (Logic/Music/Photos) on an external, and keep everything else on the internal drive. After watching all your videos, I'm leaning toward the latter.
You can connect your external home folder to another mini if the other one dies. Best to have a Time Machine backup of your internal drive with all your system settings and data and the external drive with everything on it as well. You can set time machine to have them both go to the same time machine backup. You could then just restore the internal system drive DATA from the time machine to the new computer. Then create a user account the same name as the external home folder and then activate it by selecting it's volume path in the user settings as shown. And you should be good to go. It is basically the same process I show in the video except it's easier because you don't have to migrate the user folder as you already have it on the external drive.
This is a great guide. Thanks. Was happy with the outcome until I found that Photo libraries located on the external USB drive are not Spotlight searchable. I believe this affected the People and Duplicates features. I'm also having problem searching for files in the home folders when they are in the external drive.😥I can only find files using Finder search when they are not inside the home folders.
Re index the external home folder, go to system settings spotlight, privacy at the bottom of the list, add your home folder of excluded locations, close it then open it again and remove the home folder from excluded items, and it will re index your home folder, iCloud Drive is not indexable and I have not found a fix.
Thanks, Lance. Unfortunately, the guide didn't permanently resolve the issue. I followed your instructions to add and later remove my home folders and external disks to the Spotlight exclusion list. Initially, my files appeared in the Finder search results, but after a short while, the number of search results gradually decreased until none were left. My system language is set to English (UK), Apple Intelligence is enabled, I'm not using iCloud Drive, and I've removed OneDrive.
@@JustMags-wa70 hmm my searches work but will double check this, make sure you don’t have a duplicate user on the internal drive, as in you should have a backup user with a different name and if you have another with the same name as the external delete it and reindex again. But I will check this out again, I honestly don’t use spotlight much.
This series on migrating to external drive home folders and apps has been LIBERATING! Even this li'l ol' man with his li'l ol' 8GB/256 M1 using Thunderbolt 3 ports can do it. I'm lucky in that I hadn't yet upgraded Sequoia to 15.1.1. yet, so I didn't have to agonise over A.I..
Lance, I am finding out now after moving my home folders to an external drive that Apple is locking me out of iCloud. So infuriating, but typical of the Coneheads at Apple. Are you aware of this issue? Is there any way around this? To me this is almost as bad as hackers hijacking your computer and forcing you to pay them to unlock it. How do they have the NERVE to sell a product and then try to force you to use it the way THEY want you to use it? And enticing us to buy a M4 Mac mini for $600 with crippling low storage and memory knowing that many people will just roll over and spend the extra money rather than fight them. Even just bumping up one level of storage and/or RAM takes a great deal to a huge (not a ripoff, but it forces you to pay a LOT more than you had in mind when you dropped the Mac into your shopping cart.) I may as well have gotten the m4 Pro, or even waited for the Studio. Maybe someday. I'm trying to get a channel of the ground, but Apple is not making it easy. Remember Apple almost died in the late 90's. It might be a better world if they had. Steve Jobs saved Apple, but he bequeathed his assholery to the company he created. (Not created with Apple Intelligence.)
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If you do this your home folder will not be encrypted by FileVault. If you don’t need to secure your data this is ok. Otherwise, I recommend you to install MacOs on o external drive instead. But, in that case you will not be able to enable Apple Intelligence. For me security is more important than AI.
You can encrypt the external drive, but you need to do a little bit of a workaround which might not be worth it the way to do it is to log into the internal backup user first mount the external home folder with the password and add it to the backup users keychain by hitting the checkbox when you first met the drive Then every time you boot, you first have to login to the internal user and then switch to the encrypted external and that works
@@MacSoundSolutions hi nice, is it possible that you can show it to us? Don't know the all right steps. To do wich one first? Very Very Helpful and good Videos! Even for me Nativ German. Ist possible to understand it.
@ will make a video soon. File vault only works on internal drives but you can encrypt the external drive. Will make a video soon.
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@@MacSoundSolutions If you encrypt the external drive, you will not be able to login to your account. You have to login to another account which uses boot drive, mount the encrypted drive using the encryption password and then login to user which uses external drive. If you can live with this limitation, you can go with it.
This worked - but be careful. MacOS and many applications do not like your home folder to be on an external drive for “sandbox” reasons. For example, I could not get iStat Menus to work in this configuration. I have 20+ experience as a Mac and Linux dev - and this problem burned up 20 hours of my life that I’ll never get back. Nothing wrong with the advice here - but beware there are some gotchas that will cause frustration.
IStat worked for me after the migration from my MacBook Air which had IStat installed on it, but yes the apps like IStat that are installed for all users need to live in he internal applications folder.
@ maybe I’ll try again with a different login - but 256GB is going to be a real struggle with me. I used to administer big iron, so I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty, but the balance of productivity has to be considered.
@@Absorbing146 not correct, booting off an external drive does not support Apple intelligence, it does work with the external home folder because your booting off the internal drive. The only thing I have found that doesn’t work is spotlight indexing the external iCloud Drive other than that I have had no other issues.
Thanks so much for your videos they are so helpful. I was wondering if you have tried to recover your Mac Mini home drive that was mapped to an external SSD. Here’s a video I found with a method that is supposed to work. This might be good information for your channel. m.th-cam.com/video/aWm4WmKI4HM/w-d-xo.html
Yeah, totally, so very common and I partly blame typing on "smart" phones which invariably seem to want to substitute the apostrophe versions, whether using thumbs OR voice! But, good call, officer!
I’m a recently retired engineer. Your explanations, unlike so many others, are easy to understand and make sense. Keep up the great work. I’m now a subscriber (i.e. fan) of yours.
Thanks for the kind words Greg.
@ I also drink a LOT of coffee.
Thank YOU! Got my new MacMini yesterday - will start this process on Monday when my external HD arrives. Couldn't do it without your great tutorials.
Dude ! This is great and addresses just what I was interested in, especially re: Pro Tools. I got the MBP M4 Pro.
Awesome, I moved all data and applications from my Macbook Pro M3 Pro to my new Mac Mini M4, and it went smooth. Happy Holidays from Durango, Mexico. BTW you're the man
Good to hear thanks for posting and Happy Hollidays to you and yours
Great series of "how to" on the Mac Mini M4. Followed the first videos, and ran into issues with the migration assistance. Found the hard way that MA only works on internal drive. I also had over 256GB in my user id, so migration was clearly a problem. Finally got it all working by partially selection my USER ID folders in MA, once migrated to the internal disk, moved that USER information to the external drive, and THEN used TIME MACHINE to fill in the remainder of the data needed for the USER. I liked this version of yours, since it is much clearer and a bit more simple. My migration effort took over 8 hours. Very excellent work.
When partially migrating your used files , did you remove them from the internal drive before you continued?
Great work, thank you very much🥰
As a first time Mac user and now a mini owner your videos has help me an enormous amount.
Have a great weekend and go slow on the coffee 😉
Best regards from Sweden
Thanks for making this video! seemed to work for me
Hey, Lans. Look, something fantastic happened. I transferred my home and application folders to a new SSD. Then I formatted the internal SSD and reinstalled macOS using another external SSD I created. Then I used the command line step you indicated in your earlier video and logged in using my iCloud account. Here's the cool part. Every app I owned continued to function normally. Without having to set up each one individually. I suppose it is due to all the existing user settings from the previous format. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I didn't even need to use Time Machine to restore old settings. Everything is working perfectly.
Thank you for the great videos.
@@digitalage2010 that is a bit odd which command line are you referring to in which video, I’m a bit baffled. The home user folder stores a lot of your app settings but not the things that are stored in the system library’s.
Explain!! Did you transferred the home and application folders from your old Mac device onto the new external SSD? What command line from which video did you use?
used terminal to be able to add home folder to X SSD but then I don’tknow what i did. restarted my mac mini m4 and it won’t let log in anymore plus i get white lego with error home folder not found. Can any one help i just bought my mac2 2 days ago
@ disconnect the external drive and try to boot again. If you can’t get in hold the power button when booting up the mini until you see the recovery screen if you see Macintosh HD you can try to boot from it again, if it won’t boot go into recovery mode again after shutting downs hold the power button and reinstall macOS on the internal drive don’t have your external drive connected and start over. Always have a back up user account and set that up first so you can always get into the computer then set up the external user.
@ i found out my documents can’t be opened because the original can’t be found🤦🏼♀️ what have i done!
That Acasis ProMax looks sweet, and the price is right...
@@johnplainsong9769 it’s nice
Thanks yet again Lance,
the tutorial was a bit more complicated (for me) than the previous tutorials in this series,
and because I don't use Time Machine (I use Carbon Copy Cloner),
I shall watch the video again, and also print out the comments which are very useful.
I'm trying to remember where I saw the instructions on making the External SSD bootable !!!!
Get well soon Matey, and thanks again. -
🚙☕
@@billyyoung234 you can just boot into recovery mode and it’ll say reinstall macOS just make sure to select the external drive for the install location your drive should be formatted in APFS GUID partition.
@@MacSoundSolutions --- so Lance, does this work on an existing external SSD which has already got data on it,
it won't overwrite everything, sorry for my naivety ? !
@@billyyoung234 yes you can migrate the data from the time machine to the internal drive but skip the home folder, you can copy the home folder from the time machine backup to your external drive and copy the needed data into your active external home folder.
@ no it won’t erase anything you can also add a APFS container on the drive for the home folder which does not reformat the drive just allocate the amount of space you want to use and you can have your other data and the home folder with apps separated into two mountable drives / containers.
But you don’t have to do that, if you just want to have it all on the same drive, but if the drive is not already formatted in APFS then you will have to add a APFS container if it’s formatted in exfat. But best to have the whole drive formatted in APFS GUID partition.
Can this be done on Intel Based Macbook Pro (2014)? TIA!
Hi….i bought the Mac mini pro with an enclosure and 4TB card…..oh….this video is what I need. External drive….but how do I get my old iMac over to my Home Screen…..I’ll watch this video as I just subscribed. Took me time to find you…
Thank you first of all for your videos, i'm a bit new to all this and find your instructions very helpful. However i'm a bit confused. I already set up my external hard drive as per your other video. Why can't i just do the apple migration to my new mac, then just transfer photos etc to my external. Will the migration wipeout my external setup? My old mac only has about 158 GB to transfer and a lot are older software that will not run on my new mac. This just seems like a lot of extra work that in my situation I may not need to do.
Around 8:00 in the video, he explains that Migration Assistant will want to migrate to an internal drive, not an external drive. Hence the extra steps of using Migration Assistant to migrate all but the user folder, then copying from the internal to the external drive all the stuff that Migration Assistant moved.
Note that if one actually sets up the external drive as the StartUp Drive then one can indeed use Migration Assistant to move stuff to that external drive. But as Apple has made Apple Intelligence not work with external boots most people are going to no longer use external Start Up drives. And I suspect going forward Apple will eventually drop the external Start Up capability. Even now with the M-series Macs the internal storage is the boot device, even if MacOS is set up to continue the Start Up process using an external device.
@@TheDanEdwards Thanks but im not using the external as a boot. Still my question remains. Can i just still do migration and worry about transfer files(not much in my case) manually and will it have any impact on my external drive set up?
It won’t affect the external. In that case, you can just connect your external home drive to your old Mac and copy over your main user home folder. If it’s got the same name, you can change it and then move whatever you need off of it into the proper locations. Migration tool copies everything into the internal drive so if you migrate to the internal drive, you’re then gonna have to move everything again so it’s probably easier just to plug-in your new external user drive into the old Mac copy the user folder and then put things where you need them into the external user folder. icloud photo lybrarys can be a bit tricky and you have to tell your mac where you want your "system" photo library to be you can merge the photos from your old library to the new external one. I keep one smaller system photo library for icloud photos and a much larger library for all my non cloud photos, then I move cloud to non cloud when the icloud starts to get full.
@@MacSoundSolutions excellent, thank you very much. Again really appreciate your videos
Great video..!!! Thank you..!!!. The acasis link is not working.
@@harrisedgar thanks I’ll check on it sometimes the sight goes down or the change links on my. Will double check it in a little bit
this is great! thanks!
At 15:52 you say, definitely watch "Move your Home folder to an external drive, PART 2" because it's got "some information" that's not on this video. Hmmm? That video used an entirely different approach -- no Migration Assistant. But then there's a hastily-written "update" in your pinned comment under the video that uses Migration Assistant. So, specifically WHAT information?
How did you change the icon for the HOMEX disk?
@@GarrettBane That’s my secret little trick actually all you have to do is select the drive on the desktop and hit “command i” it opens up the information window on the drive and the little icon in the upper left-hand corner is changeable on any folder or any drive as long as you have permission. you copy the icon you want to use to replace it by opening the new icon in Apple preview app, hit select all and hit copy so it’s in the finder clipboard the icon mage has to be a PNG file and it has to be small and you just paste it into the tiny little box in the info box that you first opened of the drive. And. bingo new icon!
Do you have a video on how to make an external SSD the boot drive for a Mac Mini M4? I know the cons, like no AI, but it's okay.
@@hogajar4444 you can boot into recovery install the OS on an external drive without erasing it on the internal, format your drive in GUID APFS. Make sure to select the external drive as to the location the OS it’s an option at the beginning of the install.
Hi thanks for your videos they are very informative... just a bit of clarifiaction .. I followed your previous video on how to use external drive as memory drive ... if I follow all those steps then take the External and plug it into the old imac .. then transfer everything that I want from the IMAC to the correct folders on the External and then replug the external back into the Mac Mini will that work? Dont really want to use any internal memory on the imac then having to remove and delete things. Thanks for your advice and help
It should be fine I would creat a new folder on the external call it iMac files and put everything in it from the iMac then connect it back to the new Mac and transfer things into the external folders then and do it gradually and check things out as you go rather than just move it all at once into the external folders
Do you now delete the original LanceX user from the external drive? Or do you need it for something?
You can delete it, but be sure to have a backup user admin account before you delete it for backup purposes
Great tutorial Lance! Worked for me. I’m a power user of Spotlight and not having that feature on the external drive is very disappointing. What’s the point of having a huge external drive if I can’t search through 1000’s of files for what I’m looking for? Yeah, I can gloat for not paying the Apple tax but Apple gets the last laugh with a dysfunctional Spotlight.
@@billrice250 I think there might be a fix I’m working on it. Have not had time to test it yet. Stay tuned.
Really great and clear explanation! One question, though. I have two users on my current computer (an Intel-based iMac). Should I copy every user as you explain to the external drive and then repeat the procedure as shown in the video?
@@iThunder66 yes but first and I want to add this for multi users, you should creat a “User” folder on the external first then add each account activating each one external drive/userfolder/users
Lance
I have a question. I’m copying my backup from my older system to the external. There are a lot files there. Do I have to migrate data over from migration assistant ? Is it copying the same material ? And do I have to name the user folder the same with a new account. I already set up a new in account. I bought a new Mac Studio. Something went wrong the first time so I’m doing it again. Thanks for your videos.
@@musicstudynetwork Yes migration of your data to the internal but not the home as I show in the video is the way to go and copy the home folder to the external then activate it. Keeping the same user name is a good idea in this case. And make sure to have a backup.
@
Thanks lance. It’s working now but some music programs can’t be installed on the external drive I am also having difficulty deleting files.
Great video! I was wondering where you got those wallpapers/screensavers? Absolutely love them
They come with Mac OS Sequoia
@MacSoundSolutions Ohhh cool! Gonna check right now. Thanks!
Take care of yourself. Don't drink too much coffee in the afternoon!! 😁
I found your video too late and overpaid for my storage. I needed the Mac mini because my 2015 iMac went. I have Time Machine backups but the iMac was running Big Sur. What problems will I run into with my migration when I get my Mac mini? Ps. Love your channel. Wish I found it sooner!!
You have 14 days from day of delivery to return it. I would start from scratch because you are going from intel to Apple Silicon. Best to create the external home folder on the mini like I show in my earlier videos and log into iCloud and all your iCloud data will install onto the external home folder drive. Best to be connected via Ethernet not Wi-Fi. I think if you try and migrate your Intel info to the Apple Silicon, you’re gonna run into issues because it’s gonna write things into the system folders, copy apps that won’t run etc. Best to start clean and reinstall all your non-Apple apps and you can attach the external drive to your old computer and just copy any files or data that you wanna move to the new computer onto it without using migration tool that might be the best way to go just not sure how Time Machine and migration will deal with this transition from the old Intel Mac to Apple Silicon. You can always try it but it might be more headache that way.
A bit confused by this. I’ve already set up a use with home folder on my external drive. What I want to do is get the contents of my old Mac’s home folder into the home folder of the user on my Mac mini that already has a home folder in place. In other words I don’t want to create a user on the mini with the name as the user on my old Mac. Is that possible? FYI I’ll be using carbon copy cloner for all this not Time Machine. I have instructions from ccc support how to do that via migration assistant.
Hello could you have use super duper too clone internal drive too external. And still have the ability to use apple intelligence?
as long as you are still booting off the internal drive, of the OS is on the external you can use apple intelligence
Just ordered the Mac mini a few days ago. Been looking around for a dual enclosure. Found one by Orico with Thunderbolt 4. Is it a must to get Thunderbolt-capable ones?
Another option is the Dual-NVME but with 10Gbps rated model.
Thunderbolt is faster so I think that is preferable and be aware some enclosures can have issues with random ejects. Best to have a single solid enclosure dedicated to the home folder.
Have you experienced any temperature issues with the Zika case? I am reading reports on Slickdeals claiming that these drives get hotter than normal due to the MacOS not letting them go into low power mode.
It gets warm not super hot for me, all NVMe cases get warm so far it’s been super solid, time will tell. I am not able to sleep the computer though and I tend to not do that anyway and the mini when the screen is off and the drive is not being used as in just parked it is not running hot at all, also depends a lot on what NVMe you use. One thing I really like about it is if you have static electricity on you and you touch it it doesn’t eject like some other drives do that only have metal cases? It has not had one issue as far as ejecting goes. I was able to sleep the computer with the Mac Studio when I was using it with that.
Great videos Lance! I've almost got it figured out. I have two questions.
1) is there a way to know if an application needs to stay on the internal drive because it's shared? Is the only way to know, by dragging it to the external and testing it? I am having problems with Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. I've tried opening them on both drives and neither work the way they should. I'm wondering if opening them on each drive to test has somehow screwed things up?
2)The application folder that I've copied on my external and dragged apps into, does not have the little etched in "A" on the folder. The one on the internal does. Do I have to link them? does it matter?
Thanks again,
FD
I have been playing with this, seems Apple wants an applications folder outside of the user folder to download App Store apps to that are over 1 gig, but other apps and launchpad want the app folder inside the user folder. I created a sym link of the applications folder after moving it inside the user folder, when it’s in there it gets the A icon on the folder, I then put the sym link outside the user folder while having the app folder in the user folder and so far that’s working well. I don’t use adobe apps since they went sub only, but looks like it installs apps in the individual user account that being said it also installs files in the system library like fonts and plugins. That’s all I got the moment but will be making a sym link video soon.
my home folder is on external drive now but spotlight doesn't search my files and documents I'm guessing that's because they're on external drive
I am running into an issue. I've made it through the time machine restore. I've moved files to the applications folder on my external drive, verified they work from there, but I can't remove them from the internal drive. I am not sure what the issue is. I get some error about the files being 'locked', but I've checked that, and they are not. Any ideas?
I have abandoned the 256 GB Mac mini for the 512 GB. It seems they are just way too many issues with file references that are incorrectly being referenced due to having the external Home folder location, as well as trying to move the applications there.
I found problems after transferring the user to an external SSD. The iStat application does not work - nothing appears in the top menu bar. The Scoop application opens an empty window instead of media file information. Another program cannot install a user agent. That is, the system does not work quite correctly, although many applications work as usual.
And if you log in from a user with a home folder on the internal SSD, these non-working programs start working.
What if you've already linked your Apple account?
@@AJ-on-youtube make a Time Machine backup then copy the home folder from the backup.
so what if you only have 1 SSD not the dual one? does time machine still works ?
Yes any time machine drive will work to migrate your data.
@ I used timemachine to back up my MBA m1 internal ssd to external nvme ssd and what would be the next step?!
@@dlquddh7 you need a second drive other than the time machine drive To be your external home Drive and just follow the video basically you’re just gonna copy your home folder from your time machine back up to the new external drive and then activate that home folder and you can migrate the rest of your data to the system as I show in the video
Is it better to this or just move my documents, applications and photo library
Of corse you can do that but it’s nice to have all your stuff in one location and some apps like games can take up a huge amount of your internal space.
Hi Lance, How long did the migration take? I ask because I transferred all my hard drive on an iMac Pro (Late 2015) to an iMac Pro (2022) with 1TB SSD and it took a day and a half to transfer. I used Time Machine to do it. And this was before I watched both of your videos. I did sign in to my account and iCloud like you said not to - but I only went internal to internal to swap. Thanks! I love your presentation style, easy to follow.
Gianni❤
For me it only took a few minutes but I only had about 150 gigs, if it’s a terabyte it should take quite a while but that seems really long. But if you have a huge photo library and tons of little files it could take some time but both computers have SSDs so seems a bit long but honestly I have not used TimeMachine that much.
What's the benefit of doing this versus just copying documents etc. on the external harddrive?
If you use any of apples iCloud services or backup your iPhone, to your Mac all this data normally goes to your internal drive with the external home folder all your iCloud data and photos etc will go to your external user folder instead of using your internal drives space.
Do you see full functionality on the external user folder? When I do it, Spotlight and some Finder features don’t work with the external drive or don’t sync with iCloud Drive. I’m trying to learn if it’s a consistent problem with Apple’s implementation or random quirk with my account.
@@ShoutingMan the only thing I’ve noticed is spotlight does not index iCloud Drive. Trying to figure out work around.
@ Whew! Finally someone confirming they see the same issue! Thanks! Yes, that’s what I’ve found playing with this the past two weeks. Related, Tags feature in Finder doesn’t work either (I assume because it’s based on Spotlight). Spotlight not working with the iCloud Drive makes this all completely useless to anyone who uses iCloud Drive Documents and Folder sync. I put more time than I should have trying to figure it out. But after multiple attempts, I’ve given up on external User Folder. Hopefully someone will find a solution. Or maybe Apple will fix the bug in a 15.x update.
@@ShoutingMan I've seen the same. Spent a lot of time trying to fix this also. No luck so far. Another issue I noticed is the Passwords app doesn't insert passwords at all. Any one else notice this? It is also constantly locked and I have to type my user password to unlock, then copy the password out manually.
I’m not sure what I did but my system is a mess. Halfway through my time machine was unplugged so there were two folders with the same name. After everything was done I have apps in both internal and external drive. It’s very confusing. I might just start over
@@musicstudynetwork you can just delete all apps in the internal app folder the system apps will remain, but unplugging when data is transferring is not great.
Oh you could just follow Toms Guide... or the one in 9to5Mac etc.
@@steveblanchard7293 or watch the video 😉
If you do this, how do backup/restores work?
Lets say your mac mini dies, and you are left with your home folder on an external, can this just be hooked up to a new mac mini, and be off and running with the external home easily linked to a new mini?
Or can you reinstall everything from a Time Machine backup of your dead mini, and the still alive external?
Has anyone done tried either of these to see if there are any issues?
These questions HAVE to be answered before anyone can do this project with any confidence they have a backup. Otherwise, you're taking a very big gamble with all your data.
My big decision is: do this? Or take the easier route, and put my large files (Logic/Music/Photos) on an external, and keep everything else on the internal drive.
After watching all your videos, I'm leaning toward the latter.
You can connect your external home folder to another mini if the other one dies. Best to have a Time Machine backup of your internal drive with all your system settings and data and the external drive with everything on it as well. You can set time machine to have them both go to the same time machine backup. You could then just restore the internal system drive DATA from the time machine to the new computer. Then create a user account the same name as the external home folder and then activate it by selecting it's volume path in the user settings as shown. And you should be good to go. It is basically the same process I show in the video except it's easier because you don't have to migrate the user folder as you already have it on the external drive.
This is a great guide. Thanks.
Was happy with the outcome until I found that Photo libraries located on the external USB drive are not Spotlight searchable. I believe this affected the People and Duplicates features. I'm also having problem searching for files in the home folders when they are in the external drive.😥I can only find files using Finder search when they are not inside the home folders.
Re index the external home folder, go to system settings spotlight, privacy at the bottom of the list, add your home folder of excluded locations, close it then open it again and remove the home folder from excluded items, and it will re index your home folder, iCloud Drive is not indexable and I have not found a fix.
Thanks, Lance. Unfortunately, the guide didn't permanently resolve the issue. I followed your instructions to add and later remove my home folders and external disks to the Spotlight exclusion list. Initially, my files appeared in the Finder search results, but after a short while, the number of search results gradually decreased until none were left. My system language is set to English (UK), Apple Intelligence is enabled, I'm not using iCloud Drive, and I've removed OneDrive.
@@JustMags-wa70 hmm my searches work but will double check this, make sure you don’t have a duplicate user on the internal drive, as in you should have a backup user with a different name and if you have another with the same name as the external delete it and reindex again. But I will check this out again, I honestly don’t use spotlight much.
@@MacSoundSolutions Thanks again for your help although I haven't been able to resolve this. I guess I have to make do without indexed home folders.
Lance, just curious with all the computers in use, what virus protection do you use? Thanks!
This series on migrating to external drive home folders and apps has been LIBERATING! Even this li'l ol' man with his li'l ol' 8GB/256 M1 using Thunderbolt 3 ports can do it. I'm lucky in that I hadn't yet upgraded Sequoia to 15.1.1. yet, so I didn't have to agonise over A.I..
Lance, I am finding out now after moving my home folders to an external drive that Apple is locking me out of iCloud. So infuriating, but typical of the Coneheads at Apple. Are you aware of this issue? Is there any way around this? To me this is almost as bad as hackers hijacking your computer and forcing you to pay them to unlock it. How do they have the NERVE to sell a product and then try to force you to use it the way THEY want you to use it? And enticing us to buy a M4 Mac mini for $600 with crippling low storage and memory knowing that many people will just roll over and spend the extra money rather than fight them. Even just bumping up one level of storage and/or RAM takes a great deal to a huge (not a ripoff, but it forces you to pay a LOT more than you had in mind when you dropped the Mac into your shopping cart.) I may as well have gotten the m4 Pro, or even waited for the Studio. Maybe someday. I'm trying to get a channel of the ground, but Apple is not making it easy. Remember Apple almost died in the late 90's. It might be a better world if they had. Steve Jobs saved Apple, but he bequeathed his assholery to the company he created. (Not created with Apple Intelligence.)
If you do this your home folder will not be encrypted by FileVault. If you don’t need to secure your data this is ok. Otherwise, I recommend you to install MacOs on o external drive instead. But, in that case you will not be able to enable Apple Intelligence. For me security is more important than AI.
You can encrypt the external drive, but you need to do a little bit of a workaround which might not be worth it the way to do it is to log into the internal backup user first mount the external home folder with the password and add it to the backup users keychain by hitting the checkbox when you first met the drive Then every time you boot, you first have to login to the internal user and then switch to the encrypted external and that works
@@MacSoundSolutions hi nice, is it possible that you can show it to us? Don't know the all right steps. To do wich one first? Very Very Helpful and good Videos! Even for me Nativ German. Ist possible to understand it.
@@Mo-Moto I wil try to do one soon on encrypting the external home drive. I am swamped with work at the moment but maybe next week.
@ will make a video soon. File vault only works on internal drives but you can encrypt the external drive. Will make a video soon.
@@MacSoundSolutions If you encrypt the external drive, you will not be able to login to your account. You have to login to another account which uses boot drive, mount the encrypted drive using the encryption password and then login to user which uses external drive. If you can live with this limitation, you can go with it.
This worked - but be careful. MacOS and many applications do not like your home folder to be on an external drive for “sandbox” reasons. For example, I could not get iStat Menus to work in this configuration. I have 20+ experience as a Mac and Linux dev - and this problem burned up 20 hours of my life that I’ll never get back.
Nothing wrong with the advice here - but beware there are some gotchas that will cause frustration.
IStat worked for me after the migration from my MacBook Air which had IStat installed on it, but yes the apps like IStat that are installed for all users need to live in he internal applications folder.
@ maybe I’ll try again with a different login - but 256GB is going to be a real struggle with me. I used to administer big iron, so I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty, but the balance of productivity has to be considered.
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Not 100% sure But.. Putting your home folder on an external drive will eliminate the use of Apple Intelligence & other options on your new Mac mini.
@@Absorbing146 not correct, booting off an external drive does not support Apple intelligence, it does work with the external home folder because your booting off the internal drive. The only thing I have found that doesn’t work is spotlight indexing the external iCloud Drive other than that I have had no other issues.
@@MacSoundSolutions Good to know but its not for me.
Thanks so much for your videos they are so helpful. I was wondering if you have tried to recover your Mac Mini home drive that was mapped to an external SSD. Here’s a video I found with a method that is supposed to work. This might be good information for your channel.
m.th-cam.com/video/aWm4WmKI4HM/w-d-xo.html
its, not it's.
Sorry, the apostrophe police.
@@bernardus4646 😅
Yeah, totally, so very common and I partly blame typing on "smart" phones which invariably seem to want to substitute the apostrophe versions, whether using thumbs OR voice! But, good call, officer!