My mac is starting to become slower because its almost reached it 500GB limit. How can I transfer all of the files (*Excluding Applications) from my mac onto the hardrive, but removing them off my mac in the process so Im effectivly wiping my mac, and accessing all of the files off the external hardrive.
Mac OS X 10.5.8, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
Keep in mind that having all your data on one drive internal or external without a backup is risky.
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Again to be safe you really need two External Hard Drives, one to backup everything and then one to move your tunes, pics and movies onto before deleting them from your Internal Hard Drive.
Well first you have to Zero Erase and format the drive GUID OS X Extended J (or another format if your going to work with PC's)
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Next i would start with movies as they are the largest culprit and take up a lot of room.
Get the drive below 50% filled if possible. Create new folders on the external drive and just move the contents, not the main folders.
Then I would get another blank powered external drive and Carbon Copy Cloner the OS X parition to the external, hold the option key to boot from it then use Disk Utility to Erase with Zero the internal OS X partition then revverse clone back.
This will defrag your entire OS X boot partition and place all the data up nice and close together, user files being last as they expand and contract into free space.
your OS X and apps will be fast as a result.
Move all files onto External Hardrive
