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This is the situation:
My MacMini 2019 has only 128Gb Flash so I decided to assign the home folder into external SSD/USB3 hard drive.
Randomly (but very often) at login MacOS Catalina freezes until I reboot in Safe Mode and via terminal I delete the folder /User/xxxxx/Library/Preferences/ At that point at the reboot it rebuilds the preferences and it works... for some time...
Any suggestion?
Thnx
M.
Thank you to all for the answers.
If MacOS was designed to keep home folder in the same drive there's should be no possibilities to change it.
Viceversa you can change the folder. So It can be also in a different Drive.
Anyway.. At last I solved. Was not a permission problem but file System problem. The internal Drive was APFS, the external was HFS Plus. Once I formatted the external Drive in APFS and reallocated the home folder everything was fixed.
So... Basically if you want to move your home folder to external drive (SSD, USB-C connection recommended) be sure that it's formatted with the same file system.
Cheers
M.
Thank you to all for the answers.
If MacOS was designed to keep home folder in the same drive there's should be no possibilities to change it.
Viceversa you can change the folder. So It can be also in a different Drive.
Anyway.. At last I solved. Was not a permission problem but file System problem. The internal Drive was APFS, the external was HFS Plus. Once I formatted the external Drive in APFS and reallocated the home folder everything was fixed.
So... Basically if you want to move your home folder to external drive (SSD, USB-C connection recommended) be sure that it's formatted with the same file system.
Cheers
M.
Hello MauroKTM,
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. It seems that you are experiencing issues when booting your Mac mini from an external drive. Often times, the computer freezes at the login screen. You then boot into safe mode and the computer boots properly.
From what you described, it sounds as though this is possibly a software issue. At this point you may want to reinstall macOS on your external drive.
These resources may be helpful:
How to create a bootable installer for macOS.
How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery.
Cheers!
Have you checked for any issues via Disk Utility? I’d give that a go.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/disk-utility/dskutl1040/mac
Also, I might be mistaken but I think that MacOS is designed to have home folders in the same Drive as the startup disk. Which could mean your issues might be related to permission settings...
There’s a “kind of related” thread here if you wanna have a look.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250595435
Good luck
Vicko
Thank you for the answer. Maybe I didn’t explain some details.
The OS is resident on internal drive. I just moved the home folder. There are lot of guides on Internet. One of these: https://www.lifewire.com/move-macs-home-folder-new-location-2260157
Reinstall the OS as is (Keeping the OS on the internal drive and the Home folder on the external) doesn’t solve the problem.
I don’t want install the whole OS on the external drive.
any suggestions?
thnx
MacOS forgets user preferences and freezes at login
