3 Easy Ways to Move Your Home Folder to an external SSD Sequoia 15 2 made it harder

I show you have to move your home folder to an external drive with three different methods. Apple's Sequoia update made some changes and you can't just drag and drop your Home folder like I showed in my other videos. ZikeDrive 20% off code: MSZ666
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0:00 Intro
0:23 Sequoia 15.2 error
0:37 Problem cache files
1:18 Method 1 Copy Home Folder from Time Machine Backup to external drive
4:03 Method 2 Copy Home folder using Terminal app
8:15 Method 3 Drag and Drop the new way
11:16 Create a Symbolic link "Sym Link" of your external Applications folder

#copyhomefolder #macmini #terminal

[MacSoundSolutions]

For those setting up the Mac for the first time as in new or full reset you can creat a user administrative account when first setting up the computer and don’t sign into your Apple account / iCloud on initial setup then create a second admin account which will be your main user keeping the first one as your backup user admin internally, create folders on the external drive “Users” and in the Users folder an empty folder with the same name as the second user that you want on the external then point the second account in advanced options to the external drive and Mac OS will build the home folder for you no need to copy. Reboot and log in to the external account and log into your Apple account.

[kkoppa]

I used your method to use an external drive when I was on 15.1. I then updated to 15.2 with no problems.

[AntoneJohnson]

Big ups for making this video. TBH this kind of thing breaking upon another macOS dot-release is reason enough for me to avoid moving the home folder, but I salute your willingness to chase it down and post an update so quickly.

For my purposes I decided to compromise on the 512GB mini (plus a crazy fast external 4TB NVMe RAID 0 set like the one you created in another vid), keeping my home directory internal, and just moved the really big libraries for Logic, NI, photos, videos etc. to the external drive. Still beats paying Apple another $1200!

[Kerry_CYWG]

BTW thanks for the wizardry and a voice I can tolerate as I jump forward and back following the jumping finder windows, at least I found comfort with the cmd line having lived on that in the early Unix Days.

[ivanjuarez]

they saw your video and they needed to stop this madness. keep at it man!

[ChrisPollard]

Thanks for this. When every other method failed, the rsync command line option worked! Just took a while to copy a couple hundred thousand files over. :)

[geoffreygulley]

I watched both of your original videos after I purchased my new Mac Mini. It had 15.2 and following your original instructions, I've had zero issues with the home folder, icloud content and the like. There was trial and error, restarts, forgetfulness, etc. But everything currently works.

[RobertZarywacz]

I followed the instructions on your original video and it worked find. Also copied over the Applications folder. I am on 15.2. I wanted to say thank you for the instructions. I had your video open on my old iMac alongside my Mac Mini and screen.

[mtbmonk]

Lance, please make another version of this video but call it something like “how to move google drive [or drop box etc] to external drive on macOS]
This is a major problem that this technique solves. You will be helping thousands of people and getting lots of views for your channel.

[King_Flush]

Hello! Thanks for making these videos! My base M4 mini came today with 15.1 installed. What's the best thing for me to do first? Follow your initial guide? Update to 15.2 and then delete the two files as the very first thing I do? Or is it a better way? Btw, I have not even hooked up the machine yet.

[needinput]

Woo hoo, was literally waiting for this updated video

[BorderTerrier-ykhw]

My inventory includes a Mac Mini M4, with 24 Gb of RAM, a small
hard drive, and a Samsung 995 Pro 2TB SSD, in an Acasis container.
I have watched your videos on the use of an external SSD, and have gone 'nuclear'.
Using the 'Apple Support' instructions, I now have all my o/s on my external SSD, and
my internal 256 Drive is 'empty'. My transfer speeds are c. 2800mb/s.
Everything works, it's per Apple instructions: sorted.

[beherid]

Love these updates. Thanks. I'm new to this whole Mac thang.

[kevinlopota]

Thank you for sharing, just got a m4 mini. It's my first new mac and I want to get it setup properly. Never had a new one or one that was new enough that it could receive updates lol. So I'm not totally new to macs but I am " new " to having a usable and useful mac. I'm excited to start a new journey with this system. I have a thunderbolt 3 ssd enclosure coming in a few days and will find a good drive so that I can do this very thing. Currently I have a Seagate xbox 5Tb game drive that I turned into my time machine 😊and a sandisk 256gb usb c thumb drive to store my media on. But this looks like a better solution.

[DLDLA]

Thanks for the video. The tip with the symbolic link to the application folder was very helpful and makes things easier. I have setup my Mac Mini according your earlier video ("part 1"). In this video now I see that you introduced a subfolder "Users" on your external drive which contains your home directory. As described in your "part 1" video my home directory is in the top of the external drive. Are there advantages to use an "Users" subfolder and put the home directory in there? How could I move my home directory to that place?
You also have a "Library" folder in parallel to the Users and Application folders. I assume this is the System library (?) - how can I move that onto the external drive?
Thanks.

[mtbmonk]

Thank you for this info. It’s so nice to have space for my google drive files. Before I was forced to stream them because macOS would not allow google drive to reside on external drive. Apple essentially wants to herd users, like cows, to buy more storage.

[EnervatedSociety]

Good to know. Currently waiting for my Mini M4 to arrive, back ordered, or currently sold out, don't know. I was going to OCLP my old 5, 1 knuckle dragger 😁, but to my surprise several people decided to give me Amazon gift cards this Christmas so I thought: Why the heck not? Free Mac Mini. Score! 🤘

[jean-pierrefritz]

Great video and thank you. What about stuff like Books which reside inside the System Library ?

I ended up giving up on this method because some apps like Davinci Resolve were filling up the SWAP memory (80-100GB that I had available) when running out of RAM (very often with hard editing with lots of effects), so I installed macOS in the external drive directly using a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure and it works flawless so far. I have a 2TB "internal" storage now that won't fill up. I'm getting 2, 8GB/s read and 2, 5GB/s write speeds with a Crucial P3 Plus.

[DHOLT]

Can make a video of how to back up iPhone to external drive. Or is there a way to pick the external drive for iPhone backups?