Installed SSD on new macbook pro...what folders should be on what drive?

Question

Installed SSD on new macbook pro...what folders should be on what drive?

Good morning. I have a new i5 macbook pro that I have installed a fresh copy of snow leopard onto (16GB SSD). It has not been "used" other than putting some applications on the drive. I have also put a 500GB magnetic drive that was in my Gen1 MacBook Pro in the optical drive bay, and in account preferences updated the users folder to point to that hard drive/users/ folder as the home folder.

My question is, where should the other folders be on each drive? I don't want to have redundancy where it is not needed, and I want to have the SSD running as fast as possible. Which drive should the /Applications, /Library, /System folders be in? I am assuming the SSD if possible. However, should I copy them from the 500GB to the 16GB? I am also concerned about my mail as I am not sure where the database for that lives.

Thanks!

Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jul 19, 2010 6:51 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 19, 2010 7:18 AM in response to discounteggroll

Hi discounteggroll;

Is the size of your SSD actually 16 GB? For sure?

That is extremely small. About all you are going to be able to get on that drive is your system and applications without overloading the SDD. Everything else will have to go on the 500 GB drive.

___________________

Allan

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Answer 2

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Jul 19, 2010 8:56 AM in response to Allan Eckert

I'm not even sure 16 GB is large enough for even a modest sized Applications folder: my /System & /System/Library folders alone total close to 11 GB. Add a bit for the hidden system domain folders & there isn't that much left for VM & temporary files the OS needs to work properly.

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Answer 3

Jul 19, 2010 10:58 AM in response to discounteggroll

I am going to run some apps from the 500GB, and some from the SSD. So far it has been running very nicely and without any hiccups

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Answer 4

Jul 19, 2010 11:05 AM in response to R C-R

Now that you mention that, what I was thinking when I said that guys who wanted a system on a USB flash drive for maintenance. But the OP isn't talking maintenance. This will be his running system. Now I am thinking the smallest SSD I would even consider would be 64 GB.

___________________

Allan

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Answer 5

Jul 19, 2010 11:10 AM in response to discounteggroll

So I take it from this reply that your SSD is 16 GB.

Personally I think you are going to be sorry you did that. I see problems in your future.

What version of OS X are you running?

Your profile says 10.5 and you are posting in the Snow Leopard forum.

___________________

Allan

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Answer 6

Jul 19, 2010 11:12 AM in response to discounteggroll

the idea is that I am running 2 drives (16GB SSD for all the OS files and speed-hungry applications) and dump the rest on the 500GB hard drive that now resides where my superdrive was

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Answer 7

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Jul 19, 2010 11:16 AM in response to discounteggroll

The smallest BTO SSD from Apple is 128GB and I've seen people use 32GB (sometimes with the intent to add a 2nd and run RAID0 eventually).

32GB would still be small for all the temp files, cache, that the system needs to use, and burning DVDs always uses the system drive which can eat up 24GB of space.

Plus, depends on how well OS X holds up if/when it gets to 4GB or less of free space, if it ever needs to create swap file(s).

And no, don't touch top level folders, and there are hidden folders taking up couple GB more.

http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-SevereDuty.html

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