Items Necessary on Boot Volume?

andychrist

andychrist

devil's plaything
I know this has been covered before, but honestly I am too lazy and stupid to go searching for the answer, so:

Besides System, which other folders must be kept on the Startup drive to boot OS X? Can Users and Applications be moved to another partition? How about Library?

ThanX in advance.
 
None of the folders you mentioned can be moved without some low level hacking. Symbolic links and aliases work quite well for /Library and /Applications and /Users. However, there's a lot of invisible stuff that's required. My utility, Mac HelpMate, has a feature to show/hide the invisible files. Quite good for learning what you need to know.

andychrist said:
I know this has been covered before, but honestly I am too lazy and stupid to go searching for the answer, so:

Besides System, which other folders must be kept on the Startup drive to boot OS X? Can Users and Applications be moved to another partition? How about Library?

ThanX in advance.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks, but the question is not how to move folders between partitions, but rather: what can be moved and what must remain on a boot drive? Can a Mac start up okay with only the System folder residing on that volume?
 
The short answer is NO. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of visible and invisible folders and files that have to be on the boot volume and are not included in the System folder and then there is the issue of ownership and permissions.

It is possible to move a User's home folder and the Applications folder to another drive, but moving either is not completely straightforward and there may be nagging problems in the future if you do.
 
Thanks perf. Guess I'll just pare down whatever extraneous stuff I can and leave those crucial folders where they are.
 
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