Can I move /library and/applications to a hard drive thusfreeing up space on my ssd?

many use 120GB and are fine or a 250GB Samsung 840 (not Pro) is also "dirt cheap" ]

How much space is left on the SSD?

11% for overprovisionlng, 20% or more at least for writes.

No I would not try to relocate the Applications. Maybe there are some that already allow custom install to another location, otherwise more likely to cause trouble.

42G free space is good enogh for swapping, if you installed good enough amount memory.

It's usually not a good idea to move an entire home folder, but you might want to move some large things, such as movies, music, and/or photos.

Moving your iTunes Music folder

Moving your iPhoto '11 Library

Moving iMovie '11 footage to another drive

I do not use Video or Photo editing, but I am running 10.6.8 off a 30GB (TOTAL size) SSD without issues. As long as you have found a way to get TRIM support truned on, you should be fine.

TRIM Enabler form groths used to be the way to go, but the developer seems to have lost his way (perhaps only for a little while). There is no link to download the old version, and the new version requires 10.7, hangs otherwise.

Pondini-

It's usually not a good idea to move an entire home folder

Why do you say that?

Lots of Mac Pro users have their home folder moved off the boot drive, and their Macs run much faster that way. I run a Mac Server at several schools and at home, and their home folders are on the Server computer.

Japamacs's Blog: Make room for performance -- Moving the home folder

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

Various reasons, of varying impact in different situations.

On a Mac Pro, with home folders on a separate internal drive, yes, usually less than others.

As I understand it, OSX only automatically defrags files under 20 MB on the OSX drive.

Ditto the handling of placing frequently-used files on the fastest part of the disk.

Setup/Migration Assistant can't transfer from or to a second disk, making it difficult to impossible in some situations.

If there isn't a user account and home folder (preferably an Admin account) on the OSX drive and there's a problem with the home folder drive, you can't log on.

I can't imagine that having any data, home folders or not, on a network would be faster than on an internal.

I'm not saying it's never the way to go.

I use to always move the entire ~/ to another drive.

Why not? Devil: you have to know what you are doing when you restore from a system image.

Why leave it on SSD? ~/Library - takes up 3GB for me, gets a lot of IO's and is happy on the SSD and benefits from being there.

Some have said that they use a second SSD for home! Well that may or may not be overkill it is not bad.

OS X use to have a hissy fit if you removed and did not leave /Users on the boot drive - which some people were doing so that ALL new user accounts went to another non-system boot drive.

For Grant, I think he deserves a nice new 240GB Samsung EVO or Pro model for some of those systems. 120GB will do but 240/250s tend to have better layout of NAND channels.

I wonder what the full requirements are to support the SATA 3.1+ protocols? 10.7.5 and above? It was not finalized until 2011 (10.6.x came out in Aug/Sept '09) Lion came out in July 2011. So that could be why TE 3.0 is not compatible (but it could be or did he want to drop "legacy support" - but there is talk of an alternative that has a following:

Chameleon SSD Optimizer

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/43656/chameleon-ssd-optimizer

What a lot of good points!

I have recently advocated that Users (who are moving the Home Folder) create a new Admin User that they leave behind on the Boot volume to cover the case where the Data drive gets "lost" for some reason.

Your point about Setup/Migration Assistant not being able to help is an interesting one. When the Users folder is not with the boot Drive, you can wipe the Boot Drive and never lose the Users information, making the need for those assistants less important (and a good general purpose Backup and RESTORE System more important).

The automatic defragmentation of files being limited to the Boot Drive is a new idea to me, and will need further research. I had blithely assumed that ALL files over 20 MB were being optimized when opened, not just those on the Boot Drive. The issue of Optimization of file placement will need another look as well.

--------

As for User-Files-on-Server, it can be very nearly (but not quite) as fast as files on the local computer. Apple Education urges anyone using this Server setup to establish a GigaBit Ethernet network, and this provides "near-Hard-Drive" file access times for most Network Users' files. User Caches on the Server can get stupid, so there is a supported mechanism for automatically creating caches on the local Boot Drive, placing them and Linking to a protected folder with the Username in /private/tmp so that the previous User's caches will be guaranteed to be gone by the time the next user logs in.

This Server setup gives you any-user uses any-computer, and their files appear instantly. [Think: computer clusters] For large networks, it means computers can come and go for service, with never a worry about what User data is on the computer -- there is none, it is all on the Server. But honestly, with more and more users bringing or being issued their own notebooks, the Server-end is becoming more of a synchronized repository (not quite a full backup) for copies of the files that these Mobile users have on their notebooks.

Server Backup using Time Machine does some special "tricks" for the Server, but it can back up essential Server data plus all User files automatically.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

. . .

Your point about Setup/Migration Assistant not being able to help is an interesting one. When the Users folder is not with the boot Drive, you can wipe the Boot Drive and never lose the Users information, making the need for those assistants less important (and a good general purpose Backup and RESTORE System more important).

Only if you're careful. The actual user accounts are buried deep in /private, on the OSX drive. Without them, Setup/Migration Assistant can't associate home folders with user accounts. So you must create an Admin account on the OSX drive, then create each "real" user account, which will automatically create a home folder on the OSX drive. Then you must point the account to the "real" home folder on the other drive. Not hard, but a bit tedious, and absolutely mystifying if you don't know about it, and plan for it, first.

The automatic defragmentation of files being limited to the Boot Drive is a new idea to me, and will need further research. I had blithely assumed that ALL files over 20 MB were being optimized when opened, not just those on the Boot Drive. The issue of Optimization of file placement will need another look as well.

That's my understanding from some posts by what I think are knowledgeable users, but I've never seen an "official" Apple support article that confirms it. I'm also not sure how important it is -- in some situations, it may not matter much, if at all.

And it's files under 20 MB. The Support article used to say that, but the "streamlined" version no longer does.

As for User-Files-on-Server, it can be very nearly (but not quite) as fast as files on the local computer. Apple Education urges anyone using this Server setup to establish a GigaBit Ethernet network, and this provides "near-Hard-Drive" file access times for most Network Users' files.

I wonder. My now-elderly 2009 iMac shows a theoretical 3 GB speed for my SATA link. I realize that's kinda like brake horsepower on a car -- you can't get it all to the road, and is further limited by the actual disk seek time, but then I suspect Gigibit Ethernet is similar. I have no experience with SSDs, but they're much faster than rotational HDs, right?

User Caches on the Server can get stupid, so there is a supported mechanism for automatically creating caches on the local Boot Drive, placing them and Linking to a protected folder with the Username in /private/tmp so that the previous User's caches will be guaranteed to be gone by the time the next user logs in.

Ah, cool!

And it may well make more sense in the Server environment you describe. That wasn't part of the original question, and since I know very little about the Server products, so wasn't considering it.

RE: Redirecting Caches:

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. You simply run the appropriate version of WorkGroup Manager directly on your Mac instead of on the Server:

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

RE: SATA Bus speed:

Rotating drives available today, whatever their SATA spec, can source data off the spinning platters no faster than about 125MBytes/sec.

SATA 3 is rated at 6G bits/sec, which theoretically is about 750 Mega Bytes/sec

SATA 2 is rated at 3G bits/sec, which is theoretically about 375 Mega Bytes/sec

SATA 1 is rated at 1.5G bits/sec, which is theoretically about 187.5 Meg Bytes/sec

None of the SATA Busses is a bottleneck for consumer Rotating drives you can buy today. Trying to speed up the SATA Bus will not provide any real-world performance increases for Rotating Drives.

Even most common SSD drives are not bottlenecked by SATA 2.

RE: Gigabit Ethernet Bus speeds

At 1,000 Megabits/sec, Gigabit Ethernet should be capable of 125 MegaBytes/sec transfer speeds. If the user does not make certain Jumbo blocks are in use, or allows half-duplex operation, or the link becomes congested with other traffic, these numbers could begin to impede the transfer rates of the very fastest rotating drives.

So Gigabit Ethernet in general could be said to offer "near hard Drive" speeds, and would only be a modest bottleneck.

All good stuff -- bookmarked.

Thanks!

Thank YOU for your excellent Web site, "Apple OSX and Time Machine Tips".

I post a link to one or the other of your wonderful illustrated guides about once a week, on average:

http://pondini.org

.