Still wanting to try this. It seems a few folks have reported nightmarish problems upon moving from a unified HDD to a split HDD/SSD arrangement.
This guy posted a thorough description of his experience and it sounds like there are some unavoidable hitches: [www.macobserver.com]
Would be interested in hearing from anyone for whom the process went more smoothly.

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MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

I have it split, no problems at all. I keep the system, apps, and the users folder where they belong. On the boot(SSD drive). I have my Documents, Music, iPhoto library, and movies stored in folders on the HDD and either have the apps point to the HDD (iphoto and iTunes) or put alias to the folder.

Changing the home directory to be stored away from the boot drive is a recipe for disaster. It will never end well, that just isn't how OS X is designed.

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C(-)ris



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2012 12:19AM by C(-)ris.

Depends upon what stuff you put on the SSD.

If you use the SSD for your OS, apps and home folder and just alias your Documents folder to the hard drive, I doubt you'll have any problems.

I have Lion on an SSD with the entirety of my main Home folder on a hard drive. So far the only problems that I have encountered have stemmed from the fact that I'm also using this Home folder for a Snow Leopard boot volume. I had to make accommodations for different versions of the iapps and different Dock items which had incompatible pref/plist files. I use AppleScript to swap the right pref files in when I switch between boot volumes.

No problems other than those little things.

But I used a different technique from what that guy did. I performed a clean install of Lion onto the SSD and created two admin accounts -- one of which had the same name and UID as my pre-existing Home folder on the hard drive. Then I linked that one user account to the Home folder on the hard drive.

Worked like a charm.

(Of course, I backed everything up first. And I make periodic backups of both the SSD and the hard drive boot volume. And if anything goes wrong I have the second admin acount on the Lion/SSD volume to fall back on.)

Thanks.
So if I keep the Users folder intact, but only have aliases to all of my hefty folders in my User, you think I'll be fine? The desktop folder can even be an alias on the boot drive pointing to the HDD?
How much do you have stored on your SSD?

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MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

I dont have a SSD but I pretty much follow Chris scheme.

My main boot drive is nearly empty, all working files plus music and photo libraries are kept externally.

nothing gets stored on my main drive. My documents folder is only 1.3 gigs.

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The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs [www.fakesteve.net]

I made my life more complicated than Cris, but it works fine.

Just be sure you have a full working copy as a backup so that you can tinker without concern.

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Black
This guy posted a thorough description of his experience and it sounds like there are some unavoidable hitches: [www.macobserver.com]

I've been running it this way for several months now w/o a hitch.

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__________________________________
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2012 08:10AM by bazookaman.

I don't like cluttered desktops, slows the machine down. I keep a small amount of files on the desktop, but file everything else on the HDD.

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C(-)ris

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Black
Thanks.
So if I keep the Users folder intact, but only have aliases to all of my hefty folders in my User, you think I'll be fine? The desktop folder can even be an alias on the boot drive pointing to the HDD?
How much do you have stored on your SSD?

Since I'm using Ted's method that you linked to, my "desktop" is also on my HDD since it's in my Home folder. So even though I put a lot of junk on my desktop it's still going to my HDD, not my SSD. I have a 120 (or 128) gb SSD boot drive. I think I'm using 40 or 50gb for everything excepting my Home folder.

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__________________________________
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity

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bazookaman

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Black
Thanks.
So if I keep the Users folder intact, but only have aliases to all of my hefty folders in my User, you think I'll be fine? The desktop folder can even be an alias on the boot drive pointing to the HDD?
How much do you have stored on your SSD?

Since I'm using Ted's method that you linked to, my "desktop" is also on my HDD since it's in my Home folder. So even though I put a lot of junk on my desktop it's still going to my HDD, not my SSD. I have a 120 (or 128) gb SSD boot drive. I think I'm using 40 or 50gb for everything excepting my Home folder.

Thanks, good info. I keep a lot on my deskop, and for other reasons would need a larger SSD drive than would make sense to invest in if I were only going to keep the documents folder on the HDD.
Would you say most of the negatives drscribedby Landau have been true for you as well?

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MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

If you have an old hard drive sitting around, try out to see what the bare minimum of data is that you can get by with on a boot partition. Then buy a SSD that is at least twice that big.

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in tha 510.

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Black

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bazookaman

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Black
Thanks.
So if I keep the Users folder intact, but only have aliases to all of my hefty folders in my User, you think I'll be fine? The desktop folder can even be an alias on the boot drive pointing to the HDD?
How much do you have stored on your SSD?

Since I'm using Ted's method that you linked to, my "desktop" is also on my HDD since it's in my Home folder. So even though I put a lot of junk on my desktop it's still going to my HDD, not my SSD. I have a 120 (or 128) gb SSD boot drive. I think I'm using 40 or 50gb for everything excepting my Home folder.

Thanks, good info. I keep a lot on my deskop, and for other reasons would need a larger SSD drive than would make sense to invest in if I were only going to keep the documents folder on the HDD.
Would you say most of the negatives drscribedby Landau have been true for you as well?

Honestly I cannot point to one negative. YMMV of course. But I've been chugging along at full steam with nary a problem. Dropbox initially scoffed at my Home folder being elsewhere but I sorted that. Font Explorer Pro did the same thing and I had to re-import all my fonts. Little Snitch didn't like the switch. But those were all one time issues. Once they were sorted everything ran like a top. Also those apps tend to chuck a wobbly when you just replace a hard drive. Not necessarily from moving your Home folder.

I have an "emergency" Home folder in the Users folder on the SSD so I can boot into that if my HDD goes wonky and I preform nightly clones of my SSD and HDD to duplicates installed internally. My Crashplan backup even works fine backing up both drives.

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__________________________________
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity

make a folder called "desktop crap" on the HDD.

put an alias or symbolic link to it on your SSD's user folder Desktop.

or drag the "desktop crap" folder to the end of your Dock, to the sidebar, or both. instant access, and it won't slow down your Mac.

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[www.giyf.com]

MacBook Pro (8,3) running with my OS (10.7.whatever) and just about everything on an OWC 6G 480GB and my iTunes library on a 500GB standard HD (thanks to OWC's Data Doubler). Works like a dream; I'm ecstatic about the performance of the 6G, and look forward to when SSD is the norm across the board.

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Not sure if you've seen this from TUAW:

[www.tuaw.com]

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bazookaman
Honestly I cannot point to one negative. YMMV of course. But I've been chugging along at full steam with nary a problem. Dropbox initially scoffed at my Home folder being elsewhere but I sorted that. Font Explorer Pro did the same thing and I had to re-import all my fonts. Little Snitch didn't like the switch. But those were all one time issues. Once they were sorted everything ran like a top. Also those apps tend to chuck a wobbly when you just replace a hard drive. Not necessarily from moving your Home folder.

I have an "emergency" Home folder in the Users folder on the SSD so I can boot into that if my HDD goes wonky and I preform nightly clones of my SSD and HDD to duplicates installed internally. My Crashplan backup even works fine backing up both drives.

After my pretty bad experiences early this year I can only report that my experience mirrors that of bazookman and a couple of others. Working like a charm here.

My SSD drive has all of my applications and a few other files and it takes up about 65 gigs out of 128 or so.

Bazookaman, how did you solve your Dropbox issue? I think I have the same problem as you but have not bothered doing anything about it since I rarely use the service. Thanks.

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pinkoos
Not sure if you've seen this from TUAW:

[www.tuaw.com]

Thanks...this may have come in handy earlier this year but even handier is having an Apple Store down the street!

BTW, they seem to approve of you doing this sort of operation.

I am running this setup with no problems whatsoever. However one big difference may be that I didn't exactly "move" to a split drive arrangement, it was set up that way.

That is, I did a clean OS and application install on the ssd and pointed the user folder to a new volume, which had a freshly cloned user folder on it. So everything in my user folder was preserved, and ready to go with the SSD.