File management (sort of)

I didn't know what to call the thread so apologies if the subject doesn't fit

Is there any benefit to loading the OS on a small SDD and installing programs on a separate, much larger drive?

And if there is, can I just copy the Application folder from the existing drive to the new drive?

And related to that, in the Windoze world, moving the installs wreaks all kinds of chaos on the system. So backing up just the apps is a waste of time. Is there any value in copying the App folder to a "backup" location.

This is all related to a recent HDD failure (I think EverNote took both my Mac's down but that's another story for another thread).

The biggest pita was reinstalling apps and recovering my Documents folder (only partially backed up so only partially recovered). If it's useful I could have Chronosynch back that stuff up to a remote drive and if I had another crash it would be a little less painful to recover... if it works.

Not much gained by your approach, but it will boot faster. Loading applications will take just as long as now. Not all applications can be moved, some expect to be on the boot drive. Moving applications doesn't wreak havoc, but there are .plist files that keep track of the applications, so they may need to be tweaked/replaced. No way to tell which.

Bottom line, you are better off with a slightly larger SSD that can hold both the OS and the Applications folder, then keep your data on a separate drive. That's how I have mine set up and it works very well.

Nothing works better than a good backup. Whether you use Time Machine or something like Carbon Copy Cloner doesn't matter as long as you keep up with it.

It's best to keep your Application folder on the same drive where your user folder is located. Things such as your photo library, music library, and videos can be moved to an external drive if you prefer. You can even move your documents to an external hard drive.

Since OS X does not contain a registry, splitting up the install for some applications should be OK, but there are apps such as MS Office that will fail to work if you split it up.

Why don't you just buy a large enough hard drive and place everything on it? Buy another external hard drive and make backups, then you won't have a problem losing anything if the internal drive should fail.

MacInWin said:

Not much gained by your approach, but it will boot faster. Loading applications will take just as long as now. Not all applications can be moved, some expect to be on the boot drive. Moving applications doesn't wreak havoc, but there are .plist files that keep track of the applications, so they may need to be tweaked/replaced. No way to tell which.

Bottom line, you are better off with a slightly larger SSD that can hold both the OS and the Applications folder, then keep your data on a separate drive. That's how I have mine set up and it works very well.

Click to expand...

Shorter version of the same question-

Is there any benefit to backing the applications folder up? From what you described above I get the feeling that the answer is "sorta maybe".

I guess a boot drive crash is just bad... no matter what OS

Yes, backing up the applications folder is of great value, particularly in OSX. If the drive with the applications fails, you simply restore that drive from the backup and all is good. If, as chscag suggested, you keep applications on the drive with your user account (the boot drive), then restoring that drive will recover EVERYTHING for you except any data you specifically put somewhere else. Functionally, you'll be restored, period.

And yes, boot drive crashes are always awful.

chscag said:

Nothing works better than a good backup. Whether you use Time Machine or something like Carbon Copy Cloner doesn't matter as long as you keep up with it.

It's best to keep your Application folder on the same drive where your user folder is located. Things such as your photo library, music library, and videos can be moved to an external drive if you prefer. You can even move your documents to an external hard drive.

Since OS X does not contain a registry, splitting up the install for some applications should be OK, but there are apps such as MS Office that will fail to work if you split it up.

Why don't you just buy a large enough hard drive and place everything on it? Buy another external hard drive and make backups, then you won't have a problem losing anything if the internal drive should fail.

Click to expand...

I had a 2Tb drive for the boot drive. It crashed. Thankfully the old 750 Gb drive that I removed back in March didn't require too much in the way of software installs to get me back online.

Drive 2 is a 3 Tb drive... it's 1/2 full (or empty). Some of my photographs top out at 3Gb. I shoot large pano stitches... and use a lot of layers in the TIF files. Plus 4x5 film scans top out at close to a Gb. All of that eats up space

Drive 3 is a 3 Tb Drive. It backs up Drive 2 (Chronosynch). I've got connector issues so right now it doesn't do anything

Drive 4 is a 2 Tb drive. It has some of Drive 2 on it and a lot of MOV files. Sometimes I like to edit movies. I have 678.22 Gb of space on it.

The NAS has 0 drives in it. I had 8 Tb installed and found out why they say don't use Green drives in a NAS. I am saving pennies (and larger denominations) for (4) four Tb enterprise drives set up Raid 5. Once the NAS is up then I can move some stuff around and relax about drive crashes. The NAS is the primary backup resource for me... well... it was...

Would have been easier for Jake or myself to answer your questions if you had pointed all that out in your first post.....

MacInWin said:

Yes, backing up the applications folder is of great value, particularly in OSX. If the drive with the applications fails, you simply restore that drive from the backup and all is good. If, as chscag suggested, you keep applications on the drive with your user account (the boot drive), then restoring that drive will recover EVERYTHING for you except any data you specifically put somewhere else. Functionally, you'll be restored, period.

And yes, boot drive crashes are always awful.

Click to expand...

My problem (listed ^^^) is that I am space challenged and don't have a good place to back up the boot drive.

Wait... ugh... I'm sitting here staring at a 4Tb external drive that has 2.59 Tb of room left on it... That's where the backup is going to go.

The boot drive that I have now is vintage 2009. It's never given me any problems but it's getting out there in years. Hence the paranoia. It's ironic that a new Hitachi enterprise drive bit the dirt after less than 6 months and the OEM drive is still ticking.

chscag said:

Would have been easier for Jake or myself to answer your questions if you had pointed all that out in your first post.....

Click to expand...

True... I'm amazed that I was that coherent. It's been a long week. Life sucks when Photoshop and Premier Pro are down. I've been up at 5 and crashing after 10 all week. Between my real job and trying to figure out what took the machine down it hasn't been fun.

My Macbook Pro went down today. The common denominators are: (1) Same age (2) both had just had Evernote installed on them. The Macbook boots, goes all the way to the "working" screen, and the goes black, reboots, goes to a white screen and stays there. That's slightly different than what the Mac Pro did... but close