Feed
 

Separating the main drive components without reinstalling MacOSX and the Applications.

Avatar Derek Wright
I want to add an SSD drive into the Mac Pro for the System and Application programs and separate off the User related data to a standard hard drive.

I have at the moment both executable code and data on the same drive called Main1

I want the SSD drive to be called "Mac" and the user data to stay on Main1.

My plan is to clone Main1 onto "Mac" and delete all the data under the User folder, then I plan to use the ability in Accounts in System Preferences Advanced Options for my account to point the User directory to the one on Main1 instead of defaulting to the "Mac" drive.

What I do not know is if there are any hidden consequences involving references to Main1 in the System, Library and Application supporting (as opposed to Application Data files).

If there potential problems then I am into reinstalling OSX, CS3, Aperture MS Office etc and all the other apps.

Would there be less hassle to call the system drive Main1 and the data drive a different name.

Thanks for any comments.

Re: Separating the main drive components without reinstalling MacOSX and the Applications.

Avatar Derek Wright
Just done a dummy run to a spare hard drive, cloned the "Main1" drive to "Sysbu", deleted all the data under the user name directories (did not touch Library).
Restarted the machine, a few strange messages, reset the Account User directory to the one on "Main1" rebooted and so far all appears to be ok.

Aperture works, it calls in PS3 to do do deeper manipulation on images, Firefox and Thunderbird picked up where I left off from before the change in Boot disk, MS Office works OK. So so far so good.

Can any one think of any problems that occur in the future from my manipulation of the drives.

Re: Separating the main drive components without reinstalling MacOSX and the Applications.

Avatar Gordon Clyne
What were the "few strange messages" , and how do you plan to clone the drive or move the data?? It's important because you could end up loosing critical data for the OS to track your databases and preferences.
Are you SURE you know what you are doing?

Re: Separating the main drive components without reinstalling MacOSX and the Applications.

Avatar Derek Wright
The dummy run was a over a week ago now so I cannot remember them, I used SuperDuper to clone the drives.

The SSD has now arrived at the parcel collection office so I will be able to pick it up tomorrow and install it.

The existing working drives will not be deleted - so the original bootable system will still exist once I have moved over to booting from the SSD drive.

I will let you know how it works in the next few days.

Re: Separating the main drive components without reinstalling MacOSX and the Applications.

Avatar Derek Wright
To the good and faithful 17 people that have been tracking this topic.

The SSD drive arrived this morning and was installed in the Mac Pro, the drive was initialised and the skeleton system drive was cloned onto the drive.

The first boot issued lots of Little Snitch permission questions before I could get into System Preferences Accounts and in Advanced mode change the location of the User account directory structure. Then a quick reboot - I mean quick - the data is thrown at the screen so fast that you flinch.

Starting applications is very much faster and some in application activity is very much faster.
 
Feed