Mount or link external drive folder?

[AlanG]

I plan on getting a mac mini and a 2TB external SSD. I want to replace the Mac Documents, Music and Pictures folders in the home directory with corresponding folders on the external drive(*). Being "Unix"(sort of) there are at least 2 ways to do this:
1) Delete the folders in my home folder and create symbolic links to the external folders
2) Mount the external folders on top of the home folders (has the advantage that if the disk dies you can still save to the local folder)

Which of these would be considered best in the Mac world? Or is there a different, more Mac-like solution?

(*)The rationale is that it reduces the risk of data loss during system upgrades and potentially allows me to move the data easily to another machine if needed. It also minimises the space used on the internal system disk.

 

[SGilbert]

IMHO, you are making much ado about nothing! Use your external 2TB external SSD as a Time Machine backup and don't attempt to muck up your system.
I cannot remember any data loss during a system upgrade in the many years I have been doing them since my Apple IIc days.

 

[Satcomer]

/Application/Utilities/Migration Assistant.app should be ale to move or copy data from external!

 

[AlanG]

IMHO, you are making much ado about nothing! Use your external 2TB external SSD as a Time Machine backup and don't attempt to muck up your system.
I cannot remember any data loss during a system upgrade in the many years I have been doing them since my Apple IIc days.

I've had install problems with too many upgrades to trust them - I was an IT professional for 40 years before retiring so I don't take chances! But you miss the point, the external 2TB is my main data store, I only have 512GB on the mac mini not nearly enough for everyday storage. I already have over 1TB of existing data to transfer to the new disk when it arrives. Time Machine will be backing up to my NAS. And I don't want to mess up the Apple storage structure, that's why I want the external drive to appear as if it were normal storage to the Mac apps, ie in my Home folder. Thus a mount or symlink.

 

[AlanG]

/Application/Utilities/Migration Assistant.app should be ale to move or copy data from external!

I don't want to move or copy the data. The external drive will be the master. But I want the Mac to see it as if it were local.
Hence the mount or symlink options.

 

[JaapvanderVeen]

Though I have not tested this myself, you could try to use hard links.

Maybe using a hard link makes it possible to move an iCloud Document folder to an external (not startup) disk.

The following link has a good explanation of the difference between symbolic links, aliases and hard links:

What Are Aliases, Symbolic Links, and Hard Links on a Mac

Learn the differences between aliases, symbolic links, and hard links on a Mac and how to know which type of shortcut link is best.

www.lifewire.com

 

[AlanG]

The following link has a good explanation of the difference between symbolic links, aliases and hard links:

What Are Aliases, Symbolic Links, and Hard Links on a Mac

Learn the differences between aliases, symbolic links, and hard links on a Mac and how to know which type of shortcut link is best.

www.lifewire.com

Thanks that was useful, although it doesn't cover mounts. (Which may in itself be indicative that in MacOS those are not used as much as in Linux/Unix) A symlink will certainly work for my purposes, I seem to recall reading that hard links only work on the same physical drive so I'll need to do some checking on that. And thanks for highlighting the lifewire site, there seems to be a lot of useful stuff there.