I have a MacBook Pro 2020 2TB which I used as my main machine with over 700gb of family videos and backups, pretty much used most of the 2TB, anyway I am now using a desktop so thought I would use a Mac Mini M1 with 256GB and be able to use external drives but you lose some of the MacOS experience not being able to just click the photos folders without redirecting them. I am just wondering how other users get over this hurdle?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Trying to keep the MacOS experience without enough storage?
- Thread starter aircanman
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
How are you viewing those photos?
If you use macOS Photos app, the easiest solution is to just subscribe to iCloud 2TB tier and upload all your photos to it. Then on your mac mini, simply set the Photos app to "Optimize mac storage." The experience will be the simplest as the mini will just download/remove local photos as needed without filling up the storage. The full collection remains in iCloud.
Downside, iCloud cost money.
If you use macOS Photos app, the easiest solution is to just subscribe to iCloud 2TB tier and upload all your photos to it. Then on your mac mini, simply set the Photos app to "Optimize mac storage." The experience will be the simplest as the mini will just download/remove local photos as needed without filling up the storage. The full collection remains in iCloud.
Downside, iCloud cost money.
I actually have 2TB iCloud, the only thing is when I turn on iCloud photos, there is no indication that it is uploading, and I am a little worried things will get missed, it is a massive library, would hate for stuff not to upload properly. I am probably worrying a little too much.
I've run a Photos and then subsequently Lightroom library off an external drive without any issues. I opted for an SSD just so it would be comfortably fast but I'm sure a non-SMR type HDD would be perfectly fine. SMR drives may also be fine (and very cheap) but they tend to have terrible write speeds which will make setting it up in the first place a nightmare and any future large-scale imports will be painful.
This is actually pretty common scenario; Apple makes a media/creator-centric product (or at least it's marketed that way), charges an absolute FORTUNE for small increments of extra storage, and so people end up buying a ton of external storage. So fortunately they've got a pretty straightforward way of doing it - here.
EDIT:
There's other advantages to using an external drive as well - you can use it to easily copy your data elsewhere, they're much easier to recover data from if they ever fail, and your data will be fine if your Mac dies.
This is actually pretty common scenario; Apple makes a media/creator-centric product (or at least it's marketed that way), charges an absolute FORTUNE for small increments of extra storage, and so people end up buying a ton of external storage. So fortunately they've got a pretty straightforward way of doing it - here.
EDIT:
There's other advantages to using an external drive as well - you can use it to easily copy your data elsewhere, they're much easier to recover data from if they ever fail, and your data will be fine if your Mac dies.
Wow, I didn't know that iCloud Photos now works with Photos library on external drives.
AFAIK it's been a thing for a little while now, but I've honestly never thought about it - I just chucked them on a couple of external disks and assumed it would work. It wasn't until about a year later that I found out they'd only just started supporting that kind of setup a few months before I did it, lucky me!
Lightroom on the other hand is very odd, I've recently moved from Classic to Creative Cloud and as far as I can tell it's kept all my stuff on disk but may have also created another small cache-style library on my internal SSD? Either way it seems to work fine and doesn't take up much disk space so I try to just not think about it.
You could try setting up a server.
A 'box' like Synology probably cost $200- I haven't checked recently- and a couple of big drives for $150 each.
Everyone has access to it from everywhere.
The other thing about having a server is it also serves as a backup.
That Photo library on an external drive trick is excellent though. Didn't know that and it's really useful.
A 'box' like Synology probably cost $200- I haven't checked recently- and a couple of big drives for $150 each.
Everyone has access to it from everywhere.
The other thing about having a server is it also serves as a backup.
That Photo library on an external drive trick is excellent though. Didn't know that and it's really useful.
Would this external drive method work for Music, Documents, Downloads and pretty much everything else in the iCloud Drive?
Basically have the core macOS files on the internal SSD and use a fast external drive for everything else.
Last edited:
You can easily put the music / tv folders on an external drive, the only thing for me is Apple should make it easy to redirect the main home folders to the external, it can be done using symlinks but it’s still not the same, having to click through multiple menus can be a pain.
If you use relatively fast external drives (regular SSDs), Photos (and most things) will work nicely and you shouldn't have many issues. If you run demanding projects (like edit raw video files) you might need really expensive external SSDs or bigger internal storage, but I doubt that is your use case.
Both the Music and Photos apps allow you to change the location of the library it's using.
Switch libraries with the Apple Music app in macOS - Apple Support
If you have multiple iTunes libraries, learn how to switch between them in the Apple Music app in macOS Catalina or later.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
To save storage space on your Mac, you can move your Photos library to a different storage device.
I found those pages by searching with keywords:
change mac music library
change mac photos library
No need for symlinks to move a home folder. Basically these steps.
support.apple.com
ADD: or easier symlink path, maybe can just move home folder to external and replace /Users/name folder with a symlink to external folder vs onesy twosy items inside the home directory.
Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder - Apple Support
You can rename your macOS user account and home folder, which were named when the account was created.
ADD: or easier symlink path, maybe can just move home folder to external and replace /Users/name folder with a symlink to external folder vs onesy twosy items inside the home directory.
Last edited:
No need for symlinks to move a home folder. Basically these steps.
Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder - Apple Support
You can rename your macOS user account and home folder, which were named when the account was created.
ADD: or easier symlink path, maybe can just move home folder to external and replace /Users/name folder with a symlink to external folder vs onesy twosy items inside the home directory.
Would putting the home folder on the external drive also put my iOS backups on there as well? Short of backing up a 256GB phone I think the Application Support folder is in there but the MobileSync folder wont appear until a phone is connected.
Get yourself the best quickest port on your Mac self powered external that has a bigger storage! then learn how to make Service using the free app Symbolic Linker.app and following the install steps to make a Service to folder indicated to get it done to right rick a moved for and make symb link to the original place but on the external! Mac OS won't know the difference, evening in Terminal too!