Partitioning Lion on SSD

From my last thread I was at a halt in progress so I did what I wanted to to begin with. Install an SSD for my operating system and applications.

Now I am just waiting on my hard drive caddy (optibay amazon special) to put my old drive back in for some storage space.

I have currently formatted my SSD into two partitions. 1 27gb partition for OS installation, and a second 99gb for applications.

I want to use my second 750gb drive for music, documents, and photos.

How do I go about arranging this exactly to where everything goes where it should?

Is there really anypoint of keeping Lion OS and the applications I use separate? (I use a lot of large applications but mainly thinking for formatting or another crash/forced format purpose)

Thanks in advance!

I found THIS LINK for moving the /users folder over to a different location using terminal, but I figure that there has to be a better route for all of that now.

You could move the folders like that or you could do this. Start saving your documents to the 750. For music in iTunes preferences change the music folder location. If you are using iPhoto for pictures move the library to the 750 open it once by double clicking it, then it would be default.

AS for the applications, I would not set them up that way, I would use one partition for OS and Apps. If you have to reinstall, you could copy them somewhere reinstall then copy them back. You could also just install lion as an upgrade and they would stay there. Also, one of the biggest reasons you would have to reinstall is a bad hard drive, but if that happens, you would not have either partition, since they are on the same drive.

I use lightroom for photos as well as photoshop and very rarely iphoto.

I use ableton, traktor pro, and maschine software for music and itunes just for my ipod and stuff on my ipad.

I JUST got out of a lion debacle leaving me with a decision to buy a new harddrive or to format everything I had created on my other drive to complete installation. I didn't want to loose all the loops, sounds, patterns, not to mention the thousands of images I took while doing photography. I just want to prevent that from being possible. I already partitioned my drive into two partitions. I guess I can use iPartition and just remove the partition without having to reformat again. I wasn't able to simply move my applications last time as I was stuck in a boot screen. I don't want to get put in that position again. All of my created content will go on the freshly formatted 750 when that caddy shows up leaving my SSD for just Apps and OS. I was just curious if it would be smart to create a separate partition for just my application data since I bought a 128gb solid state

yes there would be ways to move the applications folder but I think it is more work to do that then it is to just reinstall them. There would pobally have to be aliases that would link from the old applications folder to the new one for each item in the folder. Then if you reinstall, that would all have to be rebuilt.

I would recommend just doing a single time machine backup and store it on an external or on the 750GB so if you ever have to reinstall just restore from time machine instead and done. This is what I use to do when I would repair used laptop to prepare for sale. Setup one then duplicate the drive using software, it works great as a backup process in case you need to reinstall, kind of like a factory recovery partition on dell, hp, Sony, etc.

-[DG]- said:

I want to use my second 750gb drive for music, documents, and photos.

How do I go about arranging this exactly to where everything goes where it should?

Click to expand...

Just put them there. In iTunes, disable the option to copy media to the iTunes Library, or just move the Library. All those options are in the preferences. In iPhoto, hold down the OPTION key while double-clicking it. You will get the option to create a new photo library in the location of your choosing.

Is there really anypoint of keeping Lion OS and the applications I use separate? (I use a lot of large applications but mainly thinking for formatting or another crash/forced format purpose)

Click to expand...

No, there is no point. Just copy them back over to the /Applications folder. There should be no need to reinstall anything. Most Mac apps can be moved anywhere at will. The very few that can't be would have been installed by an installer, not by dragging/dropping into the drive. Just reinstall anything that you find doesn't work.

I found THIS LINK for moving the /users folder over to a different location using terminal, but I figure that there has to be a better route for all of that now.

Click to expand...

I haven't done it and I do have reservations about it. At the very least, you should have a second admin user available that has not been moved in that manner that you can use as a backup in case something goes awry and you can't log in as the user whose folder got moved. I do know that Time Machine WILL NOT back up home folders that have been offloaded to another drive.