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Why Base Mac Mini users do all sorts of things to move their home folder to an external drive?

turbineseaplane said:
My external benched slightly faster than the internal -- didn't save a screenshot, my apologies

At worst it was a lateral move that has enormously pleased "my wallet"
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The reason I ask...

I'm using an M4 Pro Mini, base configuration, with a maximum performance Thunderbolt 4 SSD. I did not move my home folder, because the entire computer performs better booting from the internal. Instead, I work in linked folders on my external drive & point apps that store huge data (like the App Store) to the external. App Store does this automatically for programs over 1GB.


Unless you have a base (non pro) Mac mini, or are using a very rare thunderbolt 5 SSD, booting from an external drive will slow your performance. I'm waiting on delivery of the ACASIS TBU501 thunderbolt 5 enclosure to hold my 4TB SSD, which would negate the issue, but I enjoy not having to worry about whether I can use my machine if the external fails/data corrupts, or cabling becomes problematic.
 
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hajime said:
Hi, given that we can just save large files such as photos, videos, downloads directly to an external drive or just move them there manually by drag and drop, why go through all the troubles to move the home folder to an external drive?
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Because the home folder is the default location for all manner of stuff. Such as your libraries for Photos, iMovie, iTunes, etc. Its a little up front trouble to make sure you don't need to think about it moving forward once set up.
 
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throAU said:
Because the home folder is the default location for all manner of stuff. Such as your libraries for Photos, iMovie, iTunes, etc. Its a little up front trouble to make sure you don't need to think about it moving forward once set up.
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exactly, convenience for me, much cheaper , i have 256gb base mini4 model, just my 3 iphones full backup alone almost 500gb storage needed, apple pay and apple intelligence will not work thru external booting.
 
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rm5 said:
Indeed. This is a known issue, and very frustrating. I had a SanDisk fail just a couple months ago.

If I had a Mac mini, I would definitely boot off an external drive. I'm even considering doing so with my 2019 iMac, because the Fusion Drive is proving to be a little unreliable (also a common issue).
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Sandisk externals ssd are god awful, had two fail on me in less then a year.
 
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cjsuk said:
I just deleted all my crap until it fits.
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Forcing yourself to re-assess your hoarded digital goods is an overlooked benefit. I did the same when I went from...

MacCheetah3 said:
I added an SSD internally — I can’t recall the capacity — to compliment the 500GB HDD of my 2012 Mac mini probably 4-5 years into its life. Then, a few years later, installed macOS onto a 1TB USB 3.1 (NVMe) drive.
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…To a 512GB SSD M1 Mac mini (because I got it for a good price secondhand). For the most part, I’ve continued to keep things tidy. At the moment, the only folder I need to clean up (again) is Downloads.
 
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throAU said:
Because the home folder is the default location for all manner of stuff. Such as your libraries for Photos, iMovie, iTunes, etc. It’s a little up front trouble to make sure you don't need to think about it moving forward once set up.
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Thanks. If the Mac needs to use swap, will it use the internal or external SSD? If we could choose, is it whichever the faster drive is?
 
MacCheetah3 said:
There are a multitude of reasons. Some that come to mind at the moment are:

• It falls within the realm of “I like to tinker.” In other words, it’s a challenge to accomplish, where time spent isn’t an expense but rather satisfaction.
• Believe it’s “sticking it to the man.” Although, the man — in this case Apple — mostly likely couldn’t care less.

I guess, I’ll say in my opinion…”Frankensteining,” “Jerry rigging,” modding, hacking, whatever you want to call it is okay when trying to extend the usefulness of a tool that has already been utilized to what might be dubbed its end of life is sensible. However, slap sticking solutions to a new item is an apparent doubling down on mistakes, you rationalized buying the wrong tool or version of tool, now you’re going to “fix” it by half-***ing it into the tool it should have been.
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It's not a mod or a hack lol, Apple provides a UI in System settings to move the location of your home directory. This isn't blackhat stuff, ROFL.
 
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hajime said:
Thanks. If the Mac needs to use swap, will it use the internal or external SSD? If we could choose, is it whichever the faster drive is?
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If you move the home folder, the system and swap remain on the internal drive. If you boot from external, it operates from there. Better performance is from internal.
 
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MacCheetah3 said:
❓❓❓
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Create an administrator account and log in using that. Go to settings, users, and you can select the user whose home folder you want to move and edit the users properties. There you can specify the user’s home folder location.

A basic administrator account is always advisable separate from your primary user account, and as long as you don’t sign into iCloud or start using apps with the administrator account, it will only use a tiny amount of space for the administrator’s credentials and preferences.
 
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stevefeinstein said:
They are however sacrificing some performance. In many cases it's not going to be a deal breaker, but it's a consideration many would want to know about.
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Not on a base Mini

All that said yes you’re right.. if performance and ease are the main concerns, and cost is not, just buy whatever Apple sells for sure
 
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techyOS said:
I’ve tried to run macOS solely on my 1TB SanDisk Extreme external SSD, but it would fail to boot the second or third time. Apparently this is an issue with different SanDisk (maybe even WD given the company connections) drives, so keep that in mind. For the people that this has worked for, congratulations on not having to pay $200 for 512GB of internal storage (I envy you)!
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Use Thunderbolt not USB.
 
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Just a heads up from old school Unix person. This is exactly what we used to do in the 90s and is completely normal on Unix systems. macOS is a Unix system. This is fine and normal.

The operating system would stay on the internal disk (root mount at / ) and then we'd hang an external SCSI disk off the back of it which had the home directories ( /home on Unix and /Users on mac). macOS is a Unix system. There is no shame or problem with this.

At this point though I'd make sure it was a decent high quality SSD, that it's formatted either APFS or if you really must, journaled macOS extended. That should survive any crashes power failures and sleep/wakeup cycles fine.

Personally I'd go for a decent quality OWC TB3/4 NVMe bridge and put an NVMe Samsung 990 Pro or something in it rather than buy an off the shelf disk. Because you never know what you're going to get.
 
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