Need Help installing My OS on my SSD I just installed on my Mac Pro.

You should at the very least backup the 1 TB drive that has all your files. You should back up the SSD perhaps to a small partition on the backup drive. The backup drive should be separate from any drives you use for other storage needs. I always recommend having completely separate drives dedicated only as backup drives.

Get that 32GB SSD replaced. Your system writes in a month are 10x that or more and it is too small and you are not going to get good performance - it may and could easily just die.

No reason with todays SSDs. Size and performance. Slower SSDs are barely faster than a good traditional hdd.

Samsung 120GB is less than $100 on Amazon

I recently installed a 256GB Crucial SSD in my 2010 Mac Pro.

Check this link:

http://icomputerdenver.com/ssd-mac-osx/

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy my system, without my home folder, to

the new SSD. You could just copy the OS if you want.

I used accounts to set up my home folder on the old system

as the home for the SSD.

Then I deleted the home folder and users/shared from the Users folder on the SSD.

In C.C.C. you can untick the boxes for what you don't want on the new drive.

I've heard it's best to keep the SSD drives only half full.

Finally I set up a maintainance account on the SSD, so I can boot the

system from there if needed.

I would having done home account every which way leave the ~/Library (3GB) on the SSD to take advange of low latency and higher IOPS. Also means you don't need to have a "maintenance account."

The ~/Library gets read and written to a lot and constantly being accessed. Linking and use of application preference or alias works for any app so they really can reside anywhere even outside the traditional home folder.

Yes you can and we always show people how to put it on a traditional hdd and some put home on another SSD. The Crucial (m5?) may fit on drive sled directly, not every SSD will and may need Icy Dock

I notice you really are just advertising your own or someone else's guide and covering more Macs than those there.

I would though not everyone agrees use TRIM Enabler (3.0) as part of setup.

time machine it from my understanding only lets me back up the hd drive im running on?

Your understanding is not correct. Time Machine backs up everything on every Raed/Write drive on your Mac, Internal or external, except Time Machine drives and anything you add to the BlackList (which can be drives, folders, or files).

No, not my guide, no promo here unless you like Regga! Just saying what I did and it works OK.

It may be best to have the home folder on the SSD as you say,

however if the SSD should fail at some point can you then boot

the sysem from the original system disk?

My SSD is a Crucial M4, Crucial's reply to my support question

regarding Trim "is a Windows based piece of software and won't run on a Mac"

then talks about "garbage collection which is always running" which is thier

way of reclaing useful space on the SSD.

Yes, I did need an OWC 2.5" drive sled.

All 3 drives in my Mac Pro back up to Time Machine no problem.

In my opinion, there are several degrees to which you can take the SSD plus Data_Drive optimization.

1) Buy a Big SSD and don't move anything. Manually redirect only your Big Photos, Music, and Movies files on a different Data drive. This approach is really easy, but requires a very large and expensive SSD. I think this is sloppy and I do not recommend it.

2) Use the existing "How to move the Home Foilder" methods often referenced here to move Users home directories, one-by-one, off the SSD to a Data drive. No Terminal commands are required for this solution. I think this is not hard to implement, requires no Terminal commands, and is the solution I recommend all SSD Users adopt.

3) use #2 above, plus create a new "Admin-only" User, use it ONLY for Administration, and Do NOT move it to the data drive. This allows the SSD to stand alone (it still has that Admin-only User you can use to log in) if the Data drive gets in trouble and won't mount. Highly recommended.

4) use #3 above, and add: Move selected ~/Library files, such as Preferences or Caches (or Both), back to the SSD. This may require the use of Terminal commands to set up the required Links. In my opinion, this is more complicated, and an embellishment that adds complexity many Users may not want, in exchange for a speedup that is difficult to quantify. I suggest this improvement may be for Users who are developers, or think like developers.

Alternative with no Terminal SymLinks, but a little complicated:

In Server/WorkStation setup where ALL files are stored on the Server, Caches stored in the Users home folder on the Server have been an ongoing annoying performance issue. Many solutions for Folder Redirection of the ~/Library/Caches folder have been developed over the years, and Apple finally added a "canned" one in 10.5 and later.

There are some tools in the Server Administration Tools (Workgroup Manager) that can accommodate automatic "Folder Redirection" of the ~/Library/Caches folder to another location at login, such as /tmp/yourname/Library/Caches/ by default. These CAN be used on a "regular" Mac. These do not require the use of Terminal, but when used on a single Mac require you to run the version of Workgroup Manager appropriate for your version of Mac OS X, directly on the Mac. More info in a follow-on posting.

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In Conclusion:

there are a number of increasingly complex ways to set up your SSD plus Data_Drive. Choose one that matches your abilities -- choosing something that is too complicated will make it difficult for you to maintain, and that can be a real problem.

There are some tools in the Server Administration Tools (Workgroup Manager) that can accommodate automatic "Folder Redirection" of the ~/Library/Caches folder to another location at login, such as /tmp/yourname/Library/Caches/ by default.

This assumes you are running the appropriate version of WorkGroup Manager:

The Managed Client.app Preference Manifest

One of the most powerful portions of the Details setup in Leopard [and later] is hidden by default. This is the preference manifest set built into the Managed Client application itself. The Managed Client application resides in /System/Library/CoreServices and contains the code used to run the entire MCX process. The compositor is also located here, along with the code to run mobile accounts, portable home directories, and much more. The MCX team built a very large preference manifest list in here that is continually being refined and revised.

The manifest is made visible by going into Details, selecting the /System/Library/ CoreServices/ManagedClient.app, and adding it to the set. The items show up as bold, gray items compared to the italicized items you already have. Some of the imports ask to replace ones you have already entered, such as Desktop. That’s okay; the values you have already entered won’t be disturbed. You will, however, be able to streamline some of your settings. Here’s a walkthrough of the manifest items offered by the Managed Client application:

...

Folder Redirection

This setting will help take some of the performance load off network home directory users. It is designed to force the current user’s Cache folder into /tmp on the local computer. When you must use network home accounts, this can mean a huge reduction in network traffic. More information is included in “User Accounts—MAs, PHDs, and More.”

To set this up, you open the setting to edit, select the Always domain, and add a new key. Choose Login Redirections from the pop-up menu. Now select that new subkey. Click to turn down the disclosure triangle, and add a new key to that key. This subkey will be called Redirect Action Info. When you open that key, you’ll see that the defaults are already filled in for you:

The default Login Redirections item

The other actions are Logout Redirection and Other Redirections. One key point here is that you cannot create a redirection to force the user’s home, or a subfolder, to an upstream or network location. These redirections take place before any mount points are available, so the redirection would fail.

from this white paper:

http://images.apple.com/education/docs/Apple-ClientManagementWhitePaper.pdf