ssd and the Mac App Store

Guys I've read different things about the stability of doing this. I have a macbook pro with two internal drives, an SSD and an regular HDD, and of course I would like to move my users folder to the HDD, and have the system boot off of the SSD. However, I keep coming across articles like this one saying it is dangerous. This article was written in 2009, however.

Can anyone speak to whether this is now a safe way to set up your system? Are their any potential problems that will arise out of this here in 2011?

This perceived risk happens when a failure takes out the drive with All the Accounts, and you cannot log in to make repairs.

I do not consider having Users folder on a different drive dangerous. I use a Mac OS X Server at home in a set up like a School where ALL the Users Home folders are on a completely different computer, the Server.

But there is one Account that should NOT be moved to a different drive. That is the initially-created Admin Account you use ONLY for Administration. As long as that account is on the Boot Drive, you can remove the secondary drive completely and still log in.

If you do not have such an Account, or are using the initially-created account with Admin privileges as your daily login account, STOP! Set up a new User-level account for your daily use and move your daily-use files to that new non-Admin account.

The only drawback is that Software Updates and such are made slightly more complex by adding a Dialog box asking for an Admin Account and password to proceed.

Using a non-Admin account for daily use provides an additional level of protection against Malware. As an example, Users who blundered into Mac Defender Trojan Horse found that if they were on an Admin account, the downloaded Malware could install itself automatically and without warning, since it did not need additional Admin authentication. Those on User-level accounts saw the dialog box and could say, "no thanks".

I was in a simmilar boat as some of you. I had bought a 60GB SSD, but my boot drive was currently using 180GB of data, where should i put all that ****? It wasnt gonna be enough to just move my home folder (althought that would have done most of the job). I looked around online and found symlinks. Think of symlinks as alias's that are way way more powerful. Basicly they make the computer think a given file or folder is on the boot drive, where it should be, but in relaity, its on your secoundary drive. See the link below for more info. Heres the rather short list of files i moved to my secoundary drive, just to give you guys some ideas:

1. Steam games ~60GB

2. Apple dev documentation 1.4 GB

3. GarageBand libraries 1.4 GB

4. iPhone backup files 7.86 GB

5. iTunes lib ~60GB (you can use itunes to move it instead

6. iPhoto lib ~15GB

7. sleepimage file (this is the file that backs up your ram when you put your mac to sleep, its the same size as yoru RAM) 6GB

now my boot drive is a comfortable 40/60 GB, but most of my homefolder (including the system files that you want to be accessed quickly) are on my SSD, but all the big stuff, is safe on my HDD. My symlinks didnt break when i cloned from my HDD to my SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner. All of this is free, and took me under an hour, but save me a boatload by not having to buy a bigger SSD drive.

Hope this answers your questions

http://www.macworld.com/article/153437/2010/08/symlinkservice.html

PS. I have an OWC 60GB 3g drive, it works amazingly fast

Grant: I have been using my admin account for my main account. Is there a reason to not do this other than security, or is there another issue at stake (re: software updates, performance)?

I've not had any issues in this regard in 7+ years of mac usage. I would be down to make the change, but is there an easy way to do it? Can I just make a new admin account in system prefs>users (accounts), and downgrade my current admin account to user there as well?

Benjamin Kier wrote:

It wasnt gonna be enough to just move my home folder (althought that would have done most of the job).

Benjamin: Your way sounds pretty great, but do you have to manually cover all new links? I have no idea how many links they are back to the home folders buried in the system. I'd be sure to miss a bunch if I was just trying to make symlinks one by one. Is there an app or automated way to do it? Also, (and more importantly to me), can you expound upon the above quote.

When I first decided to do this it seemed a simple enough operation, based on a lifehacker article. But ever since, I've just come across technical snag after technical snag. I need a safe (thorough), but also simple (read: idiot proof) solution. I'm fairly computer saavy, but the idea of changing the way my system refers to certain files seems out of my league.

Can I just make a new admin account in system prefs>users (accounts), and downgrade my current admin user account there as well?

Sure you can. And thinking of that means you have a good understanding of User/Admin accounts.

No performance penalty for User vs Admin, except the one I mentioned where updating and installing will ask for Admin Account and password. Occasionally, I find obscure third-party Apps that cannot install except on the Admin Account, but they are rare.

what I meant about what you have in quotes, is that moving just my home folder, would not have freed up enough free space to fit my boot drive onto my SSD.

Symlinking is way Easier than I think your understanding it to be. If you havent already, read through the artical in the link i provided. you only move the folders you want to keep on your HDD.

Initial setup (once per Mac).

download symboliclinker at the link below

http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/~seiryu/symboliclinker.html

double click to open it

Prodedure (once per folder your moving):

move the folder to its new home

right click, services, make symbolic link

move the link to where you want the system or application to think the folder really is. Please note, there is no possiblity of "loosing" your files, they will also appear to be in the place you move them too.

tada, congrats, nice and easy, and clean,

So I switched my Home folder. Didn't do the symlinking. Wanted to see if it was necessary, and it might still be as this leads me to two new questions:

1) How does this affect Time Machine backups? Can I just proceed normally, or will Time Machine only copy my boot drive, because - here's the thing: though I did not copy it over with carbon copy cloner, my SSD (boot drive) still has a users folder, even though there is nothing in it (except my dropbox folder - need to move it).

2) I'm having an issue in itunes where I get an error message saying "you dont have enough access privileges for this operation". No functionality is lost, but I didn't know if it spoke to a larger issue I should address. This maybe is where symlinks could solve the problem?

Again, thanks so much for your advice on this guys. Mad props!