Swap / Users & Applications on Separate partitions

[dwbird]

I am interested in separating my Swap Files and the Users / Applications and putting them on partitions / drives separate from my system partition. Is there a way to do this so this?

[quixos]

I am interested in separating my Swap Files and the Users / Applications and putting them on partitions / drives separate from my system partition. Is there a way to do this so this?

 

putting your User on another partition is very useful. after doing a clean install on your OS partition, the majority of your settings, like mail, bookmarks etc are protected in your Library. apps don't have to be configured all over again.

 

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...030813142415898

 

you don't have to set the entire Volume (partition) as Users. in their example they do...

 

sudo ditto -rsrc /Users /Volumes/Users

sudo niutil -createprop / /users/username home /Volumes/Users/username

 

but you can modify it to something like...

 

sudo ditto -rsrc /Users /Volumes/nameofvolume/Users

sudo niutil -createprop / /users/username home /Volumes/nameofvolume/Users/username

 

or any path can be used.

 

my user path is set to /Volumes/ome/Users/noni.

i use /Volumes/ome for folders and files i don't want in my user directory, and therefore easily excluded from spotlight and search.

 

if you are the only user on the computer, you can skip moving the Users and just move yourself, with NetInfo alone. that requires copying your user folders and other things that might be more work than you want to do.

 

in osX some programs DO install themselves to the official Applications folder, but they can be drug to any folder on any partition without breaking them. so i've not moved the Applications folder in this way, i've just made a personal Apps folder in my user directory to keep the programs i've installed.

 

but there are many choices you can make, and directions for about anything you can think of sanely doing are on posted on macosxhints.

 

hope i've been clear. anyway, with experimentation, it'll all make sense, and you'll find your own way.

 

the separation of the swap file from other apps is a different matter. here is a great page with many different ideas on that, and how to do it, or reasons why not to, again on macosxhints. i've thought about it, but it seems like a pain for little return. there are other tweaks that are more rewarding and dramatic.

 

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...query=swap+file