moving from HDD to SSD and HDD

Hi all,

Wow, I haven't participated in forums in a long time, so it's good to put my feet back in and hope I can help out as well.

I have a wee dilemma I'm trying to solve. I'm moving from one iMac with one hard drive to another iMac that has a formatted solid state drive (256GB) with 10.10.3 as well as a 1TB spinning platter hard drive. I had planned to transfer apps to the SSD and the rest to the HDD, but of course, it's not that simple!

I was thinking of just booting into target disk mode and using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the apps to the SSD and the contents of the user folder to the HD, but I don't think this will solve the disconnect issue that I think will occur when all the files that have been interacting from within the user folder are now kind of free-floating.

If anyone has any thoughts or advice, I'd really appreciate any help you could offer. Meanwhile, I'll head over to the forums and see if I can contribute in some positive way.

Thanks.

iMac i7 quad running 10.10.3

What you want to do is possible. I have done it with my system. But before you do start on it, a couple of questions come up. You said the new iMac has a 250 GB SSD and a 1TB HD. Are they in a "fusion" drive configuration? If they are in a fusion, then what you have is one fused logical drive. In that case, what you want doesn't make any sense as there aren't two addressable drives.

However, assuming they aren't fused, then you can clone over the apps to the SSD and your home directory to the HD. You'll have to go through the apps that have libraries (iTunes, Photos, etc) and point to the spinner location for the data. Same to set the default location for files for MS Office and Apple's Pages, Numbers, etc. And I have found that I had to keep a User directory with my user name in it for some non-Apple apps that apparently hard code the path instead of using "~" to find Home. Calibre is one prime offender for that.

I worked that way for a while, but eventually gave up on trying to be rigid about the split because of the disconnects you identified. Now I have mostly just my iTunes files on the second drive, along with my "needed, but not that often" files, but anything I use frequently is on the SSD. Pictures and movies are also on the second drive.

As for how to accomplish it, CCC can work just fine. I don't remember exactly how I got it done. I seem to recall installing the SSD in an external drive caddy, CCC'ing the entire spinner to the SSD, then installing the SSD in the HD spot, moving the spinner that had been the boot drive to the optical bay of my MBP, then booting from the SSD and deleting what I didn't need from the HD and SSD. When I realized I needed the User directory for some software, I cloned it back to the SSD, then purged it of most of the lesser used stuff. In your case, the iMac is not easy to open and remove drives for that work, so you might use an external as a "swing" drive, if you have one. Target mode could also work but may be slower depending on the speed of the interface between the two machines.

MacInWin said:

You said the new iMac has a 250 GB SSD and a 1TB HD. Are they in a "fusion" drive configuration?

However, assuming they aren't fused, then you can clone over the apps to the SSD and your home directory to the HD. You'll have to go through the apps that have libraries (iTunes, Photos, etc) and point to the spinner location for the data. Same to set the default location for files for MS Office and Apple's Pages, Numbers, etc. And I have found that I had to keep a User directory with my user name in it for some non-Apple apps that apparently hard code the path instead of using "~" to find Home. Calibre is one prime offender for that.

I worked that way for a while, but eventually gave up on trying to be rigid about the split because of the disconnects you identified. Now I have mostly just my iTunes files on the second drive, along with my "needed, but not that often" files, but anything I use frequently is on the SSD. Pictures and movies are also on the second drive.

As for how to accomplish it, CCC can work just fine. I don't remember exactly how I got it done. I seem to recall installing the SSD in an external drive caddy, CCC'ing the entire spinner to the SSD, then installing the SSD in the HD spot, moving the spinner that had been the boot drive to the optical bay of my MBP, then booting from the SSD and deleting what I didn't need from the HD and SSD. When I realized I needed the User directory for some software, I cloned it back to the SSD, then purged it of most of the lesser used stuff. In your case, the iMac is not easy to open and remove drives for that work, so you might use an external as a "swing" drive, if you have one. Target mode could also work but may be slower depending on the speed of the interface between the two machines.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the great response, Jake. They are two separate drives (it's a 2011). The SSD has the OS and the 1TB is allocated as storage. I think I can target disk mode my applications to the SSD, then use CCC from the SSD to transfer user data to the mechanical drive. Thank you for mentioning the issue with Calibre; I also have a lot of Adobe CC applications, including LR, so this will be interesting!

My slightly odd question, coming from ignorance, is: if my home folder is on the SSD for boot purposes, but won't be used to store my user data due to lack of space, can I move the contents of my user folder to the 1TB HD without there being an OS on that drive? Actually I should ask when you say home directory, do you mean the actual home folder? I think I'm having conceptual difficulty because I just don't have enough familiarity with what happens when you essentially divorce the user data from the OS, so I'm trying to wrap my head around it.

Thanks again. And again.

To answer the question, no you don't need an OS on the data drive, just a /Users/yourname that matches the boot drive. Technically, you don't need a /Users/yourname folder on the boot drive, but as I said, some applications seem to have the /Users part hard coded and don't read what the system sees as "~", or the system path to your home folder.

One thing: To change the location of your Home directory for the system, you'll need to read this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201548

and this:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5480291?start=0&tstart=0

and this:

How to Move a Home Directory to Another Location on a Mac | OSXDaily

That last one seems to be the easiest. But I'd read all of them.

And make backups before you start...Remember, Murphy was an optimist.

Thanks again, Jake. And yup, redundant backups, in fact, with one on a remote server, because I could actually spontaneously combust.

I think you should look at this, too:
Creating your own Fusion Drive | Other World Computing Blog

I would personally recommend against fusion drives. The challenge with fusion is that if either of the devices fails, you lose everything on both.

Thank you to you both.

gsahli, I somehow missed that post from OWC, and I was reading their blog back then. Thanks for the link.

Jake, I see what you're saying. At first I thought no huge problem, but it got sticky quickly once I started thinking it through.

Could be I'm still... I smell coffee! I made coffee! I'm going to go drink coffee!

I'm awake.