Running Applications with data on an external drive

Yes that will work.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support

Move a Final Cut Pro library - Apple Support

To keep your Libraries safe you should use a minimum of two external drives.

One to hold your Libraries and one to backup the Libraries on the first.

Running an app is something, and storing data is another.

For instance, i run Final Cut Pro from internal drive, but lot of movie shots and pics are on external drive.

I run Native Instruments software on internal drive, but most sound libraries are on an external drive (i would otherwise fill my entire internal drive !).

shortly, most apps (programs) should be installed on internal drive (they do, by default).

You may need to bring heavy data (depending on what you do) internally for “treatment”, production, or else. Then free up that space once you’re done with final output (to external drive or a cloud).

You're welcome.

The TV app library works the same as the Photos and Music App's. Just copy to the external drive and point the TV app at the Media folder on the external drive. see > Use multiple libraries in the Apple TV app on Mac - Apple Support

smcrea wrote:

One question. When creating a folder on an external hard drive then do you have any advice as to the naming convention for the path?

Such as D: /user/TV/media

You can use any path or naming convention you want to use.

But I do NOT recommend creating any "/user" folder on your external drive, as it will end up causing confusion at some point, either for you, macOS or an app.

In my own case, I created these top-level folders on my external drive:

• /Documents - for general purpose documents
• /Music - for Music
• /Movies - for TV
• /Pictures - for Photos
• /Video - for Final Cut

What you are asking is normal practice on any computer to save space on the internal drive.

Always run your apps on the internal drive but set them to save on the external as den.thed's links show.

smcrea wrote:

Also, I was looking at the higher option Mac mini but also comparing that with a Mac Studio. I intend to have two non-apple monitors.

As you start to load up a M2 Pro Mac mini with extras – especially 32 GB of RAM – there will come a time at which the price approaches, or even exceeds, that of a similar M2 Max Mac Studio. At that point, it may make sense to get a M2 Max Mac Studio.

If you're looking for a detailed comparison …

The M2 Pro Mac mini and M2 Max Mac Studio both have

• Four multi-purpose USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2, USB4 40 Gbps, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt 4) ports
• A HDMI port
• Two USB-A (USB 3.0) ports
• An Ethernet port that can operate at Gigabit Ethernet speed

The processor in the Studio has more GPU cores and more video encoding / decoding engines.

You can order the Mini with 16 or 32 GB of RAM. You can order the Studio with 32, 64, or 96 GB of RAM. Neither machine has upgradable RAM.

Both should be up to the task of driving two non-Apple monitors. The base M2 Mini only has a resolution limit of 6K for the first USB-C / Thunderbolt monitor. If you attached two 4K monitors using USB-C, your Retina scaling options on the second one might be more limited than your options on the first. The machines you're looking at can drive two (M2 Pro Mac mini) or four (M2 Max Mac Studio) displays with 6K resolution over Thunderbolt, and drive another monitor with 4K resolution over HDMI at the same time.

The Studio has two front-panel USB-C (USB) ports and a front-panel SDXC card slot.

10 Gigabit Ethernet is standard on the Studio; optional on the Mini. Note that the 10 Gigabit ports do not support falling back to Fast Ethernet speeds – Gigabit Ethernet speed is as low as they will go.

Servant of Cats wrote:

Note that the 10 Gigabit ports do not support falling back to Fast Ethernet speeds – Gigabit Ethernet speed is as low as they will go.

Thanks for the info. I guess this might be a problem if the ethernet cable happens to be Cat5 or older or if using an old router. The network might then not work at all?

While I don't use Final Cut Pro, I keep all those things mentioned and more on external drives and only keep apps on the internal drive.

However, some apps will still keep some data in the hidden user library folder which in general not large amounts of data (settings, caches, some add-on tools, etc.). Often those apps that keep a lot of data in those areas will have options to put some of it on an external drive.