Upgrade macbook to ssd in dvd drive

[tinkerbotsict]

Hi, i have purchase a new ssd for my macbook ive taken out the media drive and put the ssd in a cage everyhting working and can be seen in finder. But what i want to do is now use this just for files and leave my current one ive been using as the operating system. But i asked for help and friend told me what to do but when i do the terminal bit nothing is happening and i want to hook up my documents, downloads etc to the new drive.

 

This what i was told to do but not working the first steps

 

Open the terminal window

Enter cd

Then drag the home folder

 

E.g. cd and drag the home folder in

 

Then enter sudo rm -rf and enter your admin password when prompted

 

e.g. sudo rm -rf Downloads

 

ln -s and drag the new location on the other hard drive to match up to

 

Repeat for all the other folders

Recreate the shortcuts in the finder menu

 

Any help would be grateful ive even thought about if someone can help remotely do it lol if i cant figure it out. Im not the most technically able person but i do like to try myself.

Edited February 10, 2018 by tinkerbotsict

[dhicks]

Open the terminal window

Enter cd

Then drag the home folder

 

E.g. cd and drag the home folder in

 

Then enter sudo rm -rf and enter your admin password when prompted

 

e.g. sudo rm -rf Downloads

 

ln -s and drag the new location on the other hard drive to match up to

 

Repeat for all the other folders

Recreate the shortcuts in the finder menu

 

What the above instructions are trying to do is replace the Downloads, etc, folders in your home folder with soft links to folders over on your new SSD (we use the same approach for network folders on our school's Macs). I would avoid the "rm -rf" commands - they delete everything in a folder, I'd recommend moving those folders elsewhere instead so you have a backup in case something goes wrong.

 

Once you've replaced folders with links, you'll need to reload Finder - a reboot should sort this out for you.

[tinkerbotsict]

Thanks but when you put enter cd in terminal it doesn’t do anything

[2ilent8cho]

Make the new folders on the new drive. (Desktop, Documents etc) You can copy your existing stuff in if you want.

Run the following commands to make sure you have full rights to delete and to delete existing folders (Everything will be deleted!)

 

chmod -R -N ~/Documents

chmod -R -N ~/Desktop

chmod -R -N ~/Movies

chmod -R -N ~/Music

chmod -R -N ~/Pictures

rm -rf ~/Documents

rm -rf ~/Desktop

rm -rf ~/Movies

rm -rf ~/Music

rm -rf ~/Pictures

 

Now make a symlink to them

 

ln -s "/Volumes/My second hard drive name/folder/Documents" ~/Documents

ln -s "/Volumes/My second hard drive name/folder/Desktop" ~/Desktop

ln -s "/Volumes/My second hard drive name/folder/Movies" ~/Movies

ln -s "/Volumes/My second hard drive name/folder/Music" ~/Music

ln -s "/Volumes/My second hard drive name/folder/Pictures" ~/Pictures

 

Then run

 

killall Finder

 

You my have to recreate the favourites in finder. Obviously change the 'My Second hard drive name' to the name of the Volume, if you do not know what it is open terminal and go to /Volumes and run the ls command.

Edited February 12, 2018 by 2ilent8cho

[tinkerbotsict]

I’m completely lost thing I need someone to help me physically do it as totally confused.

[Fazza]

When I replaced my optical drive in my MacBook with a caddy with a HDD in it I gave up trying to transfer everything across like that and just reinstalled the OS on to the new HDD instead as it was quicker to reinstall everything than to get my head around moving it all at the command line.

[Another]

Thanks but when you put enter cd in terminal it doesn’t do anything

 

Hi there

 

Are you entering cd [space] drag in folder [enter]?

 

So CD for change directory, SPACE to seperate that command from the path, drag in the folder to give the terminal window the path and then ENTER to select/go into that folder?

 

Hope that helps

[zlatanlex24]

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[Marci]

No idea why you've been advised to do this on the command line / in terminal. It can all be done by dragging and dropping folder to new drive then updating home location for your user accounts.

 

Essentially - copy the user's home folder to new drive same way as you'd copy any other folder to somewhere else.

 

Now head to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Right click (or alt-click, or two finger tap) on the user whose home folder you moved > Advanced Options > Click 'Choose' alongside the Home Directory field, browse to the new location. OK.

 

Reboot, log back in, delete the home folder from the original drive.

See https://www.lifewire.com/move-macs-home-folder-new-location-2260157

Edited February 13, 2018 by Marci

[Marci]

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One would suggest that one's first post on a forum such as this should be more than "Google it". *rolls eyes*

[Fazza]

Visit following great solver as https://www.google.com/

 

So in other words you dont know? More spam.