I have just installed a "Asustor Drivestor4" onto my home network and want to know if it's possible to use it for my home folder and how to go about this? I have tried to edit the home folder location in the users section of system preferences, however, this flags up error so am thinking that either there is another way or it's not possible. Any help is very much appreciated
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Resolved macOS User Home Folder On NAS
- Thread starter eaopmedia
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I really don't have the vocabulary expertise to sufficiently explain how bad an idea this is, even if you do succeed. Just leave your Home folder where the OS expects to find it, is the best I can say. There's nothing stopping you storing all your documents on your NAS. You can even make Finder and other apps point there by default.
I essentially want everything to point there when saving automatically so that nothing is saved on the client machine, leaving the boot drive to store applications and not get clogged with user files
Best way is to change the default save folder in the applications your client will be using.
Take it from me that mucking about with where MacOS expects to find the Home folder creates a whole lot of pain.
Take it from me that mucking about with where MacOS expects to find the Home folder creates a whole lot of pain.
I currently have a separate raid array in my client machine that I pointed from the login advanced menu, understand that it causes issues here and there, however, I created a separate admin to deal with those pains, like to be able to know that it's possible to do it, or not haha. It's a pain to direct applications, especially when you have hundreds that you use.
The Raid in my client, however, is on it's way out, hence wanting to use the NAS.
Move it to another physical disk. I don't see any profit in having a smb connection to a NAS, especially since MacOS writes to system folders within home folder all the time. It's going to be annoyingly slow, no matter what NAS you provided. And you provided one of the slowest of them all.
Honestly, your idea is better realized if you provided remote desktops to virtual machines.
I have achieved what I wanted now, I created alias' of each folder, i.e Documents, Downloads etc from the NAS, then replaced each one in the host physical drive for said user, so now when I get into the user, when ever I save or download, it will point to those folders on the NAS
Very nice. Now imagine what happens when your NAS is powered off or not available on the network.
I have done that like 10y ago when I still had to mess with the mount points and the like in Apple's Directory App. I finally succeeded, but that was about it. Once your Mac wants to save something in the Homedirectory and the NAS is not available, the respective Settings- or other folders are just recreated, leading to some split config files at best, or worse, data loss.
I didn't last a week with this setup, and have since resorted to backup and cloud sync software to keep earlier versions in a sparsebundle/Time Machine on the NAS and the new version on the NAS/in the Cloud for sharing.
H.
That's cool, but you didn't move your home folder an inch, you asked for something completely different than you did. Effectively you did what @MajorFubar said.
I like this concept but wouldn't net-booting basically accomplish this? I seem to recall SJ demonstrating 50 iMacs booting from a single PowerMac G3. I've never been able to find out how to make a Mac boot from a networked machine because the search terms always bring up something else unrelated.
The benefit of network booting is that ALL dependencies are on the larger storage device. Supposedly, you wouldn't need an internal drive in your client at all. The downside would be how to have onboard apps for the sake of speed. I believe if you fix that last bit you are home free. I've known video editors that had 100% of their content stored externally and were able to edit without a hint of lag or delay.
While on this topic, what are some good candidates and interfaces for seamless remote work? Say I want to remote from any Mac in my house to the same user. If net booting is a reality, I'd have a User on a Server. I could use any Mac in the house to log into said User and the save-state would be perpetual and up to date. Theoretically, I could start a job at home in my office, pick it up in my garage, then finish it while waiting at the DMV. Would 5Gb/s ethernet suffice at home, assuming every device was 5Gb/s capable? SAS? Is there a WiFi standard that's fast enough to match an M1 MacBook's internal SSD? I'm just throwing things out there since I really have no clue what I'm talking about and it doesn't hurt to ask.
What would be a good server configuration for this setup if again assuming network booting is possible? Should I just plug a QuickSilver in to the network and install OS X Tiger Server? 🤪 But seriously, NAS vs DAS, dynamically swappable RAID drives for contingency... this opens a lot of questions but to the OP I think that net-booting (if possible) is a kind of beat-all.
The benefit of network booting is that ALL dependencies are on the larger storage device. Supposedly, you wouldn't need an internal drive in your client at all. The downside would be how to have onboard apps for the sake of speed. I believe if you fix that last bit you are home free. I've known video editors that had 100% of their content stored externally and were able to edit without a hint of lag or delay.
While on this topic, what are some good candidates and interfaces for seamless remote work? Say I want to remote from any Mac in my house to the same user. If net booting is a reality, I'd have a User on a Server. I could use any Mac in the house to log into said User and the save-state would be perpetual and up to date. Theoretically, I could start a job at home in my office, pick it up in my garage, then finish it while waiting at the DMV. Would 5Gb/s ethernet suffice at home, assuming every device was 5Gb/s capable? SAS? Is there a WiFi standard that's fast enough to match an M1 MacBook's internal SSD? I'm just throwing things out there since I really have no clue what I'm talking about and it doesn't hurt to ask.
What would be a good server configuration for this setup if again assuming network booting is possible? Should I just plug a QuickSilver in to the network and install OS X Tiger Server? 🤪 But seriously, NAS vs DAS, dynamically swappable RAID drives for contingency... this opens a lot of questions but to the OP I think that net-booting (if possible) is a kind of beat-all.
Net Boot and Network Homes are dead. They used to be a thing. Apple deprecated both years ago. As others have said, attempting to make either of these features work in modern macOS is likely to cause only pain.
That said, if you wanted to configure vintage systems in a home lab deployment, you can do this with Mac OS X Server and Mac OS X clients (I wanna say 10.7 or earlier). NetBoot can be used to either A) boot Mac OS 9 / X install media to install locally, or B) boot a complete system image entirely over the network. Network Homes can then be used to store home folders on the server via AFP.
I supported a setup a bit like that back around 2012-2014. It was cool, but it wasn't without daily issues. I was happy to get rid of it.
That said, if you wanted to configure vintage systems in a home lab deployment, you can do this with Mac OS X Server and Mac OS X clients (I wanna say 10.7 or earlier). NetBoot can be used to either A) boot Mac OS 9 / X install media to install locally, or B) boot a complete system image entirely over the network. Network Homes can then be used to store home folders on the server via AFP.
I supported a setup a bit like that back around 2012-2014. It was cool, but it wasn't without daily issues. I was happy to get rid of it.
Well thanks for clearing this up. I don't mind using old crap as that's 90% of the Macs in my house but not at the expense of daily headaches.
OP you're just using Aliases in the home directory? Let us know if this breaks or works out going forward. My fear is exactly what Helmlein said about what can happen if the path is interrupted.
OP you're just using Aliases in the home directory? Let us know if this breaks or works out going forward. My fear is exactly what Helmlein said about what can happen if the path is interrupted.
There is a lot of data in your Home directory not in those folders. What did you do about the user Library? There is a lot of very important stuff in that.
I am convinced one of the things holding back human development is our insistence to re-make others' unwise decisions just so we can experience the same failure.
You can use NAS for home folder but it’s not stable (I have tried move home folder to external drive). It’s better to create folder (ie Documents, Music etc) in NAS then create soft link from alias in home folder to the original location. Also, don’t move your library folders. I have run this setup for few years for my family iMac and never had issues.