How do i move data to my iMac's second hard drive?

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Level 1

4 points

How do i move data to my iMac's second hard drive?

I have a 2011 iMac which i ordered with a second hard drive to increase the storage capacity. The first drive is nearly full; how do i tell it to save onto the mainly unused second one? Or move data from one to the other?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Dec 16, 2017 8:57 AM

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Answer 1

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Dec 19, 2017 5:20 AM in response to PGWL1

The Mac OS is basically designed to work with a single drive and it is up to the user to create a plan to use multiple drives. There are a couple of strategies.

Move the user directory to another drive. See this article.
Move the iTunes library to another drive. See this article.
Move infrequently used files to another drive - just drag them to the other drive and delete them from the internal drive.

The first solution used to be somewhat dangerous but Apple has made it more fool-proof. I personally prefer the second solution. I have a very large collection of music and video and moving just this data to another drive frees up more space than I'll ever need on my startup drive.

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Answer 2

chuck_3rd

Community Specialist

Dec 18, 2017 3:07 PM in response to PGWL1

Hi there PJWL1.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. It looks like no one has answered your question yet. This could be that the community needs some more details to help you out.

1. Are you talking about having an extra external hard drive to increase storage capacity, or are you referring to the optional 256GB SSD for that model year?
2. Do you use Time Machine?
3. If so, have you saved it to an external hard drive or to a Time Capsule?

Answer these questions and provide as much detail as possible and hopefully the community will be able to help you out.

Take care.

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