Installing Apps on secondary hard drive running OSX 10.10.2

Joined
Aug 28, 2011
Messages
41
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
Southeast Alabama
Your Mac's Specs
iMac 27 (11,3), 32GB RAM, 480GB SSD, 2 TB HD, Logitech Mac KB, Trackpad, 2 USB ext HDD (8 tb)
I have installed a new SSD (120 gb) along with a new 2 TB HDD. Reinstalling my most used and memory/disk intensive apps is using up my SSD space rapidly. Most Apps do not offer option to specify which disk to install it on, yet I need to install rest of apps on the HDD. How can I install other apps on the new HDD (which is drive 1 now while SSD is drive 0)? Anyone already done this successfully?
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
25,564
Reaction score
486
Points
83
Location
Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Alas unlike Windows Apple does not offer to install apps on a second hard drive. This is because apps are dragged/opened in the Application Folder which is part of the operating system, however keep searching someone may have struck something that will work.

The easiest answer was a 120GB SSD is just not big enough.
 

chscag

Well-known member
Staff member
Admin
Joined
Jan 23, 2008
Messages
65,248
Reaction score
1,833
Points
113
Location
Keller, Texas
Your Mac's Specs
2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
The easiest answer was a 120GB SSD is just not big enough.

Harry is right. I wouldn't consider using a SSD of that size for my primary drive. Try moving things like your iPhoto and iTunes libraries to the 2 TB drive. Also, any videos, books, movies and other things that take up a lot of space should be moved. You can also move all your documents to the 2 TB drive as long as you give the app that uses them a path. If you just use the SSD for apps you may get by.
 
OP
I
Joined
Aug 28, 2011
Messages
41
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
Southeast Alabama
Your Mac's Specs
iMac 27 (11,3), 32GB RAM, 480GB SSD, 2 TB HD, Logitech Mac KB, Trackpad, 2 USB ext HDD (8 tb)
Well, I was short sighted in that I thought that less than 10 GB would hold OSX, but I failed to realize that OSX fails to allow installation on other hard drives. However, I do find that apps on my old HDD that is now installed as an external firewire drive will open and run, but they may be installing themselves on the SSD. I have encountered one post where there was a suggestion of combining the SSD and HDD as a 'fusion' drive, but it will require modification of the parts of OSX that control this. However, that only means working in Terminal with Apple Linnux, something that does not scare me IF I can get trustworthy advice in how this would be done. In the meanwhile, I will just try to keep the mem/disc intensive programs on the SSD. Thanks for your input.
 
OP
I
Joined
Aug 28, 2011
Messages
41
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
Southeast Alabama
Your Mac's Specs
iMac 27 (11,3), 32GB RAM, 480GB SSD, 2 TB HD, Logitech Mac KB, Trackpad, 2 USB ext HDD (8 tb)
PS Maybe later I can upgrade the SSD to 512 GB or even 1 TB. Need $$ however, and that is in short supply at tax time.
 
Joined
Apr 17, 2016
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Points
1
100 % Working... CAN USE SECONDARY HDD TO RUN APPS

Installing an application on a secondary drive is the same as installing it as one would on the Mac’s main hard disk: just drap and drop the .app into the Secondary drive. And you can run it from there once the application has fully copied itself over.

Just run the installer for any particular application you want to install, like you would for a normal OS X application installer on your primary SSD.

Once you have completed the installation/ just drag-and-drop that particular application from your applications folder, just run the application from your Secondary hard disk. Once you copied to your secondary one, just double check & Then you can delete that particular app from primary drive.

Hope this will help evryone

Thanks :)
 
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
25,564
Reaction score
486
Points
83
Location
Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
The latest OS El Capitan is a +5GB download, but much larger when installed. I run Office, no iTunes nor iMovies, limited Photos, no Antivirus and clock close to 50GB of hard drive space.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top