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

Install Lion/Mountain Lion on a New HDD/SDD

Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.

Boot to the Your OS Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND- R keys until the Recovery HD's main menu appears.

Partition and Format the hard drive:

1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.

2. After DU loads select your new SSD (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the SSD as the destination.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Now, boot from the SSD to assure it will boot the computer. Open Users & Groups preferences and click on the lock to authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on the account listed for the SSD and select Advanced Options from the context menu. You will note a field labeled Home Directory: with a button on the right labeled Choose. Click on the button. A file dialog will appear. Locate the Home folder on your HDD. Select the entry and click on the Open button. This will return you to the Advanced Options window. You must now Restart your computer.

After the restart you will be booting from the SSD but using the Home folder on the HDD from which you used to boot.

30 GB is small for a Boot drive, but it can work. Applications operate better when launched from the Boot Drive as well. Mac OS X is said to require a minimum of 9GB of Hard drive space to operate safely.

I run a 30GB SSD as a Boot Drive. I got it for really cheap, and it works fine, BUT -- every SSD should have TRIM Enabler or Chameleon installed and enabled on it, and Installed on your backup System. If you do this, when you run a Disk Utility (Repair Disk) against the SSD, you get an additional line of output, "Trimming unused blocks" and it pauses there while it completes the TRIM for up to a minute.

Mac OSX can boot from any drive in any bay. The Boot drive is the one last-specified in System Preferences > Startup Disk ... or set automatically by Installing a new System.

DO NOT delete your existing system, Install from scratch onto the new drive and leave the old System alone. Create one Admin user you expect to use ONLY for administration, and leave it on the SSD. Then follow Kappy's last section for specifying where additional Users files will be located (on the second drive) and do not change the name of that drive afterward.

No. Leave your 1 TB startup drive alone. You have to partition and format the SSD, then install OS X onto the SSD. Boot from the SSD then change the location of the Home folder from the SSD to the Home folder on your 1 TB HDD.

Kappy-

There used to be the option of moving one /Users/<username> at a time to another location. Is that still available now?

You can reassign the Home folder to another location that contains a Home folder. But only one assignment at a time, if that's what you mean. There is no "moving" of a Home folder in Users & Groups. You may copy a Home folder to another location or you can use a Home folder from another system on another volume.

Thanks, that is exactly what I was asking about.

I encounter users baffled by Terminal, but committed to using an SSD, and wanted to know if my old "standard references" regarding moving one Home folder at a time were still good.

http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/

Japamac's Blog: Make room for Perormance -- Moving the Home Folder

I find that if I must move a Home folder or copy one to another location, I just do a basic Drag and Drop of the /Users/account_name/ folder. Of course it can also be done using the command line using either cp or mv. I don't know which is fastest.

Link Davis pointed out to me that The Finder will happily copy hidden folders, PROVIDED they are inside a non-hidden folder. Does not work if there are hidden things at Top-level where you are copying from.

So you can copy a whole user_id folder with drag-and-drop, but not the nine or so standard folders inside individually, because Library is hidden (unless you change that, which requires Terminal again).

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying Davis said you cannot copy a Home folder by Drag and Drop because the /Home/Library/ folder is hidden? Hogwash! You can also copy any of the folders inside the Home folder including the Library folder if you make it visible.

Your third-party applications are still on the 1 TB HDD in the Applications folder. You can make aliases to them on the SSD this way they don't take up much space.