acook1985

Q: Storing everything on external hard drive

HHey guys so I want to get a new MacBook and store everything like pictures, iTunes, iPhone backup, etc on an external drive so little is stored on the on board hard drive. Can this be done so that when you say open iPhoto, it can access the pictures from the drive but not have them on the main internal hard drive?

iPhone 4, iOS 5.1

Posted on Feb 25, 2016 2:46 AM

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Q: Storing everything on external hard drive

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  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Feb 25, 2016 3:20 AM in response to acook1985
    Level 6 (10,497 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 25, 2016 3:20 AM in response to acook1985

    Yes you can.

    But a word of advice: do not store "everything" externally: the Home folder and the System folders should stay on the Startup disk. But not all of the Home Folder is necessary. You can move the Music, Movie, Photo and such out. That alone reduces the used space on the Startup drive enormously. Just move them, the next time you open iPhoto hold the Alt(option) key and point iPhoto to the new location, same for iTunes.

  • by Cunnla,

    Cunnla Cunnla Feb 25, 2016 3:24 AM in response to acook1985
    Level 4 (2,016 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 25, 2016 3:24 AM in response to acook1985

    HI,

    Yes, you can do that. If you have your iTunes folder on an external drive, the first time you open iTunes, hold down the Option key and select Choose library, then navigate to the iTunes folder on the external drive and click Open. This should work for Photos too.

    If you do that and want to use Time Machine for backups, you have to do a few adjustments. See this article. http://pondini.org/TM/32.html

    You should have your Time Machine backups on a separate external drive.

  • by acook1985,

    acook1985 acook1985 Feb 25, 2016 3:28 AM in response to Cunnla
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Feb 25, 2016 3:28 AM in response to Cunnla

    OK great. But if I'm moving from a Big Mac Pro to a MacBook, how do I go about moving all of this over?

  • by Cunnla,

    Cunnla Cunnla Feb 25, 2016 3:41 AM in response to acook1985
    Level 4 (2,016 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 25, 2016 3:41 AM in response to acook1985

    You can use Migration Assistant. Move your content to a new Mac - Apple Support

  • by pinkstones,

    pinkstones pinkstones Feb 25, 2016 3:37 AM in response to acook1985
    Level 5 (4,209 points)
    Safari
    Feb 25, 2016 3:37 AM in response to acook1985

    acook1985 wrote:

     

    OK great. But if I'm moving from a Big Mac Pro to a MacBook, how do I go about moving all of this over?

     

    Copy and paste.  Select the files you want to copy, make sure the external hard drive is connected, then paste them into the folder you want them to be in on the external drive.  Once safely in place, delete the originals from the computer's internal drive, then start the process all over again for everything else you want to move.