Best Way to Run Mac OS on an External Drive
November 14, 2020 4:57 PM Subscribe
Anyone else running MacOS on an external drive? What is the best, most reliable way to do this? Should I just change the external drive to be the boot drive? Change my home directory to the external drive and keep the OS on the internal SSD? Or should I just point my Photo & Music directories to the external drive, since they take up the most space?
I am running a 2018 Mac mini with the 3.6ghz quad-core i3 CPU, 8gb RAM and a 128gb SSD (couldn't bring myself to pay the Apple tax for a larger SSD). I am running out of space and need to expand my storage capacity. To that end, I purchased a Crucial 1tb SSD, that I'm running in an OWC Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.
When I tried setting my home directory to the external drive (my preferred setup), everything goes wonky and it won't/can't start up Photos or Music, so that route is out for me. Everything I've read says this should work, but it appears it might have been killed with Catalina? Do I have to switch to the external drive lock, stock & barrel? I only have 5gb left on the internal SSD, so I need to get this figured out asap.
Any recommendations?
I am running a 2018 Mac mini with the 3.6ghz quad-core i3 CPU, 8gb RAM and a 128gb SSD (couldn't bring myself to pay the Apple tax for a larger SSD). I am running out of space and need to expand my storage capacity. To that end, I purchased a Crucial 1tb SSD, that I'm running in an OWC Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.
When I tried setting my home directory to the external drive (my preferred setup), everything goes wonky and it won't/can't start up Photos or Music, so that route is out for me. Everything I've read says this should work, but it appears it might have been killed with Catalina? Do I have to switch to the external drive lock, stock & barrel? I only have 5gb left on the internal SSD, so I need to get this figured out asap.
Any recommendations?
Move your iTunes and Photos libraries and files to the external. Buy a second external drive and back up the first to the 2nd.
When launching iTunes or Photos, hold down the option key and select the drive with the libraries.
posted by inviolable at 6:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
When launching iTunes or Photos, hold down the option key and select the drive with the libraries.
posted by inviolable at 6:56 PM on November 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
Yes, do not boot from the external for day-to-day usage, but it is entirely reasonable to put your itunes and photo libraries on the external drive.
posted by rockindata at 4:07 AM on November 15, 2020
posted by rockindata at 4:07 AM on November 15, 2020
That's a high performance SSD solution, you can just move everything to the external and forget the internal drive even exists. Ideally you'd put the user folders only on the external, and keep Applications and System internal, but it's probably not worth the effort. It might be a little slower, but not enough to matter.
posted by doomsey at 2:10 PM on November 15, 2020
posted by doomsey at 2:10 PM on November 15, 2020
Chiming in to agree with the previous commenters. I've been running an external with all my music on that drive—an SD—and the system folder, with a second 1.5 TB drive as a Time Machine drive, and everything is pretty darn zippy.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 4:16 PM on November 15, 2020
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 4:16 PM on November 15, 2020
It’s been a long while since I’ve replied to one of these, but you totally do not want to boot and run MacOS from an external ssd. It will physically start up and work, but it’s endlessly, frustratingly buggy. Like issues waking from sleep only every few days, random kernel panics related to the storage drivers, etc. it becomes one of those car that runs perfectly at the mechanics shop sort of infuriating background annoyances.
You should absolutely be able to move the home directory or anything else you want to it, and it should only take a bit of fiddling with photos etc to make that function, but I’ve spent many hours troubleshooting running the actual OS from an external with mojave and newer
my big gripe here is this DID used to be fine, which is probably why it’s still generally supported for things besides just like, install disks. People used to do this constantly with FireWire drives in the old days. But recent versions have made it REALLY weird, inconsistent, and unstable... and I hate it
posted by emptythought at 4:11 AM on November 16, 2020
You should absolutely be able to move the home directory or anything else you want to it, and it should only take a bit of fiddling with photos etc to make that function, but I’ve spent many hours troubleshooting running the actual OS from an external with mojave and newer
my big gripe here is this DID used to be fine, which is probably why it’s still generally supported for things besides just like, install disks. People used to do this constantly with FireWire drives in the old days. But recent versions have made it REALLY weird, inconsistent, and unstable... and I hate it
posted by emptythought at 4:11 AM on November 16, 2020
Chatfilter, but... interesting. I set up combo external SSD/internal HDD on my dad’s iMac and that’s been dead-nuts reliable the entire time. I’ve also used external SSDs to run alternate versions of MacOS for short-to-medium times (up to days), and that’s also been fine but I’ve never really interacted it with sleep. Not going to dispute your experience, just curious if you’ve ever tried it with a desktop because I wonder if it matters.
posted by doomsey at 6:50 AM on November 16, 2020
posted by doomsey at 6:50 AM on November 16, 2020
Response by poster: Thanks for all the responses. Part of my heartburn is there are no trustworthy sources (that I can find) who have documented this sort of setup in the last two years, and that is enough time for me to question if the articles I've found are still current. Based on my experience, with trying to set up the home directory to my external drive, I'd say the answer is "No". I don't think I want to go all external because even if it works perfectly, I am the type of person that I'd want macOS on the internal SSD to stay up-to-date and that strikes me as a maintenance hassle.
Whatever I do, I want to be able to set it once and forget about it. No holding Option while loading, etc, etc...
FYI, my external SSD is slower than the internal for read functions, but it is almost twice as fast for write. I found that interesting. The T2 chip combined with Thunderbolt 3 really is impressive -- if I was confident on long-term reliability, I doubt you'd be able to tell I was running off an external drive. I think I'm going to change the settings for photos and music and see what that gets me. Right now, I can't upgrade to Big Sur because I don't have enough disk space.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:14 AM on November 16, 2020
Whatever I do, I want to be able to set it once and forget about it. No holding Option while loading, etc, etc...
FYI, my external SSD is slower than the internal for read functions, but it is almost twice as fast for write. I found that interesting. The T2 chip combined with Thunderbolt 3 really is impressive -- if I was confident on long-term reliability, I doubt you'd be able to tell I was running off an external drive. I think I'm going to change the settings for photos and music and see what that gets me. Right now, I can't upgrade to Big Sur because I don't have enough disk space.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:14 AM on November 16, 2020
I've been doing exactly this for the past 10 months on my 2012 iMac. It has a 1 TB HDD with Catalina. The specs are fine, and it was still supported by Apple, but the hard drive killed overall performance. I purchased a USB 3.0 128BG SSD to use as the main drive I boot from. I keep backups on another external drive and in the cloud. My internal drive is now only for file storage, though I can boot to it if necessary (it's outdated but usable).
The performance improved significantly: applications open quickly, menus open and close smoothly, and high-intensity tasks like video rendering are stable and quick (relatively speaking; it's still an 8 year-old machine). It's now more than useable for the tasks I need.
To do this, I installed Catalina on the external SSD, set it up using my current Apple ID, then used the MacOS Migration Assistant to copy everything from the internal drive to the external drive. When it finished, I changed the default boot drive to the external SSD, and I've been using it this way ever since with no problems with sleep, rebooting, updating/upgrading, etc.
(Note: I could have either restored from backup or used the Migration Assistant at this point. I chose the latter to have some control over what, exactly, was transferred during the process. It's been a while, though, and I don't have an empty SSD to try it again at the moment, so the specifics of the operation may differ a bit if you try it.)
For your setup, just having the OS on the internal drive and all data and storage on the external would probably work better. You can find out how to do this here:
Apple Music Storage Location
Apple Photos Storage Location
You can move your user profile folder to the external drive:
Open System Preferences
Go to Users & Groups
Click the padlock and authenticate
Right (or control) click on your username and select "Advanced Options.."
Click on the "Choose..." button and point it to where you want your home folder to be.
Hope this helps whichever way you choose to go. Good luck!
posted by malthusan at 4:11 PM on November 16, 2020
The performance improved significantly: applications open quickly, menus open and close smoothly, and high-intensity tasks like video rendering are stable and quick (relatively speaking; it's still an 8 year-old machine). It's now more than useable for the tasks I need.
To do this, I installed Catalina on the external SSD, set it up using my current Apple ID, then used the MacOS Migration Assistant to copy everything from the internal drive to the external drive. When it finished, I changed the default boot drive to the external SSD, and I've been using it this way ever since with no problems with sleep, rebooting, updating/upgrading, etc.
(Note: I could have either restored from backup or used the Migration Assistant at this point. I chose the latter to have some control over what, exactly, was transferred during the process. It's been a while, though, and I don't have an empty SSD to try it again at the moment, so the specifics of the operation may differ a bit if you try it.)
For your setup, just having the OS on the internal drive and all data and storage on the external would probably work better. You can find out how to do this here:
Apple Music Storage Location
Apple Photos Storage Location
You can move your user profile folder to the external drive:
Open System Preferences
Go to Users & Groups
Click the padlock and authenticate
Right (or control) click on your username and select "Advanced Options.."
Click on the "Choose..." button and point it to where you want your home folder to be.
Hope this helps whichever way you choose to go. Good luck!
posted by malthusan at 4:11 PM on November 16, 2020
Edit: my new internal drive is 250 GB, not 128Gb. Sorry.
posted by malthusan at 4:24 PM on November 16, 2020
posted by malthusan at 4:24 PM on November 16, 2020
Response by poster: So, here's where I stand:
As I mentioned earlier, when I change my home directory to the external SSD, I can't run anything. When I try to start Photos or Music, the system just goes to beach ball and hangs until I Force Quit.
Music will let me change my library to the external SSD, but Photos doesn't like changing from the internal SSD. When I try to direct it to the folder on my external drive, it gives me a message saying it can't find the folder.
I can boot into the external drive and everything seems to run fine (a tad slower*) but Photos is only working with my library on the internal drive. Also, when I look for my Documents folder, it claims there is nothing there. Weird.
I should note that I used SuperDuper to clone my internal drive to the external drive, so I really don't get why it won't recognize the new library locations.
* For the curious, when I run Blackmagic Speedtest on my setup, I get 2324 mb/s read & 561 mb/s write on the internal drive vs. 1356 mb/s read & 1068 mb/s write for the external setup. So the external is half as fast for read and twice as fast for write. Interesting.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:24 PM on November 18, 2020
As I mentioned earlier, when I change my home directory to the external SSD, I can't run anything. When I try to start Photos or Music, the system just goes to beach ball and hangs until I Force Quit.
Music will let me change my library to the external SSD, but Photos doesn't like changing from the internal SSD. When I try to direct it to the folder on my external drive, it gives me a message saying it can't find the folder.
I can boot into the external drive and everything seems to run fine (a tad slower*) but Photos is only working with my library on the internal drive. Also, when I look for my Documents folder, it claims there is nothing there. Weird.
I should note that I used SuperDuper to clone my internal drive to the external drive, so I really don't get why it won't recognize the new library locations.
* For the curious, when I run Blackmagic Speedtest on my setup, I get 2324 mb/s read & 561 mb/s write on the internal drive vs. 1356 mb/s read & 1068 mb/s write for the external setup. So the external is half as fast for read and twice as fast for write. Interesting.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:24 PM on November 18, 2020
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1. I made a bootable backup of my Mac drive using SuperDuper
2. Leaving the backup drive connected, boot into it using Target Disk Mode
posted by meowzilla at 6:00 PM on November 14, 2020