[ferg]

HI,

My HD crapped out and I have my files and apps backed up on another external drive.

My Mail folder(from user/library), I have had to copy to another additional external drive as it is too large to fit on the drive I am running the OS on. Is there anyway to get Mail to use that folder? I just get the whole "Start a New Account" dialogue box when it starts up and the option to import it(which I cannot do as there is no space).

I tried putting an alias in there, but it is not picking it up.

Please let me know if it is possible?

Thanks.

[Mithras]

Sure, just create a symlink in the Terminal.

First, quit Mail and move the ~/Library/Mail folder to the other disk.
Then, in Terminal, do:

cd ~/Library
ln -s /Volumes/Otherdiskname/path/to/Mail Mail

and fire up Mail -- should work fine.

[ferg]

Thanks, I just gave it a try and it returned something like

ln: ./Mail: File Exists

I opened Mail and it continued to bring up the Import dialogue.

Now I have it on a partition of a drive, in the root, does this make a difference? I am entering:

ln -s /Volumes/PartitionName/Mail

Thanks again.

[Mithras]

If the file Mail exists in ~/Library, then you didn't successfully move the old folder over. Or, there's a new blank folder created by Mail.app on one of your earlier attempts. Get that out of the way first.

[ferg]

Ah right you are, I neglected to remove the alias I had put in the Library. Seems to be working now! Thanks much!!