Moving Home Folder to External for those getting the 256GB Base Model

[hajime]

Thanks for the analysis.

I don't use iCloud nor play games on the Mac.

I plan to install Office for Mac (10GB), Affinity suite V2 (9GB) and Parallels. Plan to store the VM on external drive. Parallels states 600MB + additional disk space for guest OS (at least 16GB for Windows OS). I may add FCP but not sure.

I plan to backup photos and videos of my 256GB iPhone to an external drive via the Mac. About how much disk space will it take from the Mac as a middle person for copying?

 

[bzgnyc2]

Thanks for the analysis.

I don't use iCloud nor play games on the Mac.

I plan to install Office for Mac (10GB), Affinity suite V2 (9GB) and Parallels. Plan to store the VM on external drive. Parallels states 600MB + additional disk space for guest OS (at least 16GB for Windows OS). I may add FCP but not sure.

I plan to backup photos and videos of my 256GB iPhone to an external drive via the Mac. About how much disk space will it take from the Mac as a middle person for copying?

That will all depend on how many pictures/videos you keep on your phone between sync. Based on the above, I assume you are not going through iCloud and using USB sync'ing of pictures back to your Mac based on Photos. Then whatever the pictures take on the phone will likely take on the Mac (assuming you are using Keep Originals in the phone's settings). If you fillup your phone with 200GB of photos/videos between sync'ing, they'll be 200GB on your Mac. If you plan to have one photo library and that photo library to be stored in your home folder on the internal drive, that drive will need to have at least 200GB of free space when you do the sync.

I believe it's possible to configure an alternate Photos library stored directly on an external volume (in addition to moving your default Photos library entirely as discussed earlier) and I believe no need to worry about free space on the internal drive if you import directly there. However, I have no direct experience with that setup and best to ask others here who use multiple Photos libraries.

Also, note that if you backup your phone to your Mac, those backup files will also require space on the same drive as your home folder. If your phone has 200GB of photos/videos on it, your backup will likely be more or less the same. In which case, you'll avoid this peak space requirement by first importing/deleting your photos from your phone to your Mac. Then if not a direct import to the external drive, moving the files there. Then backup your phone to your Mac.

 

[steve217]

I followed Mac Sound Solutions video with a base 256/16 M4 Mini; even the point of using the Zike external enclosure.

Everything is pretty much normal. My external drive is about 30% faster in writes than the internal drive. 3000 mbps vs 2000.

The only anomaly I would like to fix is that I can't seem to delete applications with the user on the external drive. I have to log in with the internal user. Both are admin but the internal user is more admin than the other.

When I try to delete an application, I get this message:
"The operation can’t be completed because some items had to be skipped. For each item, choose File > Get Info, make sure “Locked” is deselected, and then check the Sharing & Permissions section. When you are sure the items are unlocked and not designated as Read Only or No Access, try again."

 

[AlaskaMoose]

That will all depend on how many pictures/videos you keep on your phone between sync. Based on the above, I assume you are not going through iCloud and using USB sync'ing of pictures back to your Mac based on Photos. Then whatever the pictures take on the phone will likely take on the Mac (assuming you are using Keep Originals in the phone's settings). If you fillup your phone with 200GB of photos/videos between sync'ing, they'll be 200GB on your Mac. If you plan to have one photo library and that photo library to be stored in your home folder on the internal drive, that drive will need to have at least 200GB of free space when you do the sync.

I believe it's possible to configure an alternate Photos library stored directly on an external volume (in addition to moving your default Photos library entirely as discussed earlier) and I believe no need to worry about free space on the internal drive if you import directly there. However, I have no direct experience with that setup and best to ask others here who use multiple Photos libraries.

Also, note that if you backup your phone to your Mac, those backup files will also require space on the same drive as your home folder. If your phone has 200GB of photos/videos on it, your backup will likely be more or less the same. In which case, you'll avoid this peak space requirement by first importing/deleting your photos from your phone to your Mac. Then if not a direct import to the external drive, moving the files there. Then backup your phone to your Mac.

I have never used iCloud to store my photos, files, and music. I just create libraries of the original photos and save them to external HD's and SSD's. There are a few ways to accomplish things like that. This is a long video, but somewhere near its end the host tells how to move libraries to external hard drives. The problem with any "cloud storage" is that a few years later one has a great number of photos store far from home (please watch it in YouTube).

I do have lots of photos stored in SmugMug, but these are copies of my original photos that I have edited and are very small in size to post online, or just email to family and friends.