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help! SSD for applications + additional SSD for data

mi_jan
Enthusiast
Cheers im currently awaiting for delivery a new MBP 2016[details in signature]

I want to purchase an External SSD with USB-C connection to use as my data dump. but the tutorials I've seen make you copy all the system files +data to the external. Since im starting from a new machine what would be the smartest thing to do?

Do I really have to copy everything to the external or can i just open archicad files directly from the external and run the program on the computers SSD and thats it?

So far the tutorials I have found are for older mbp with optic bays and thats not really what I'm going for in this case. [https://petralli.net/2011/12/the-perfect-ssd-and-hdd-hybrid-macbook-setup/] If anyone can redirect me to any tutorial or point me the way on how to manage to do so.
iMac - MacOs Big Sur 11.6.6
Archicad 24 - Latest Build
Archicad 25 - Latest Build
2 REPLIES 2
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Pretty easy once you know the trick. Was going to post screenshots, but found these tutorials for you:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1164891/mac-apps/keeping-mac-os-and-data-on-separate-drives.html

http://www.jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/Blog/00E03B83-1ADA-406E-A940-396D39F598EA.html
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
mi_jan wrote:
Do I really have to copy everything to the external or can i just open archicad files directly from the external and run the program on the computers SSD and thats it?
...and yes, you can just have your AC files/etc on the external drive - not your entire user/home folder - and just open them from there.

Only great reason to move your entire user/home folder is if you want to move the drive back and forth between Macs and log in to find everything the same ...or if your main drive just isn't large enough to store all of your apps as well as your user folder.
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB