[Rev2Liv]

Greetings,

Any direct links on tips for Mac OS X users that use a SSD/HD setup? For example, on my new iMac, i'm trying to offload as much stuff as possible to the 1TB drive.

I've mainly used alias' to link stuff back like pictures and music. I'm sure it's part of a UNIX command or something, but how would I relocate my Applications folder natively to another location and have OS X recognize it as such.

Any more tips much appreciated!

[fritzair]

Your point is very timely. Moving my old MacBook to a SSD has resulted in much quicker boots and more battery life. Has made the older machine very current for most non video based tasks. How great that would be to use a small SSD for the OS and apps while you have a larger TB HD for storage on my iMac. MAy have to buy a new machine to get that feature.

Mike

[MacsBug.]

The best way to do this is after you move the Applications to the 1TB drive to create a symbolic link rather than an alias and place the link at the root level of the boot drive.

You would do this in the terminal by using the following command:
ln -s /Volumes/(1tb drive name)/Applications /Applications

[BLAZE_MkIV]

I don't believe the applications folder is as finicky as the user directories. Moving the applications to the HD is giving up the advantage of the SSD though. I've got an SSD and HDs in my MacPro and the delay when it spins the HDs back up when I haven't pulled files of there in a while gets annoying.

[OreoCookie]

I recommend against moving your Applications folder from the SSD to the harddrive: storing your apps on your SSD is the most important reason why your system will feel more responsive!

MacsBug is correct: you can use links to refer folders on your harddrive. You could move your Picture or Music folder this way. Aliases have the tendency of not working in all circumstances, depending on the app, symbolic links are the way to go.

[kapete]

Here are some links I used as resources for this.
MacTalk - Tutorial: How to install an SSD in your MacBook Pro

Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup � Matt Legend Gemmell

fritzair OWC has kits to replace the optical drive with another HD Mount 2.5” HD or SSD in Optical Bay of Apple MacBook, MacBook Pro Unibody, Mac Mini with DataDoubler

[demani]

Generally we have been leaving the System, Library, and Applications folder on the SSD, and moving the entire Users folder to the HD. Use a symlink, and that should square everything away.

Something like:
$ sudo ditto "/Users" "/Volumes/HDname/Users"
$ sudo ln -s "/Volumes/HDname/Users/" "/Users/"

(check that before using)

You can also move them individually, then right click on the user in System Preferences>Accounts and go into the user options to change where the system looks for that user's home directory.

But in general, keeping applications in place, or installing them directly where you want them (potentially neccessitating you reinstall them) is better than moving them. Some just don't like links, and others have other tidbits that are hard coded to look in the Applications directory.

[Medazinol]

I just bought a new 27" iMac with the stock 1TB hard drive and installed a new 128GB third-party SSD drive in it. I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you are technically adept (I'm a Mac technician) since the iMac is *not easy* to take apart but I digress.

I installed the SSD even before I booted it so I just booted off the DVD and ran Disk Utility and imaged the new SSD from the stock hard drive.
I then booted as normal (boot speed was less than 7 seconds!) and created a fresh user account. I then ran all the software updates I needed to apply, installed some fresh apps etc..

I then copied the latest backup of my home folder from my Time Machine backup to my 1TB internal drive thusly in Terminal:

sudo rsync -avE --update --times --progress /Volumes/pathtothehomefolderbackup /Volumes/1tbdrivename/

This command will properly copy your home folder intact onto the 1TB drive. After this I just went into System Preferences, click on Accounts and right-clicked my account name and selected Advanced Options… I then selected in Home folder the location of my copied home folder on the 1TB drive. Click OK and logout & in or reboot and you're good to go!

This way your data (in my case over 200GB) stays on the mechanical drive and the OS/apps live on the SSD.
OS X will know where to put your data since it queries the DLAP directory in the OS as to where your home folder is.
I don't notice any speed differences using this setup as the OS, apps and /tmp are always accessed from the SSD. Data files load from the HD but they are generally smaller so this is good way to go on a desktop. Laptops obviously don't really apply here
On a desktop you *can* get away with a smaller SSD if used for the OS and apps (not your home folder). I did this for a customer recently on an older Mac Pro and the speed increase was phenomenal, it breathed new life into a perfectly fast machine.
Mechanical hard drives are the biggest bottleneck in today's computers, SSD solves this problem.

Easy as pie and no hacking required.

[P]

My setup is to have all the default folders (System, Library, Users, Applications etc) on the SSD and just move all the other stuff to the HDD, but this is because I already store all the data outside my Users folder (in /Documents - in all honesty, I never moved it in after moving from OS 9). Three folders in my home directory have been moved to the HDD and symlinked back: Desktop, Downloads, and the Steam cache folder. I've also enabled the noatime hack as detailed here (I have not used the other hacks).

[billf]

Some of the suggestions here are making this process much more complicated that it has to be. I just purchased a new iMac with 2TB HDD and the 256 GB SSD. I keep the OS and related files, and Applications on the SSD. That is where you seem to get the greatest advantage with speed. And applications don't really take up as much drive space as you think, even the large programs like Adobe. I moved my User directory or folder to the HDD. Here's how I did that. I simply dragged and dropped the user folder onto the HDD at the root of that drive. (Unless you have a lot of users there is no real need to place them in a separate users folder, although you could do that) I left the original user home folder on the SSD - there were no files in it and no real need to delete it. If you have files in any of those directories I would simply delete them once you confirm that they have copied properly to the HDD. Of course make sure you have a backup for those files in case something goes wrong. I then went to the user account and changed the location of the home folder to the new HDD location. You can browse to the location which is even better since you don't have to worry about typos. Then I simply rebooted. The icons for Movies, Pictures, Music, etc in the sidebar remain intact. This is much easier that using all those Unix commands. Command line is great when needed, but the whole point of a graphic user interface is to eliminate the need to do that very often. I have installed a lot of applications and still have plenty of SSD space, and everything else is stored on the HDD. Hope this helps.