Dee_Ann

CooSee, on 21 January 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

Thank you for the additional advice!  I will definitely take it..

As for using directories other than the SSD primary disc, I found and followed these basic instructions,

http://apple.stackex...to-another-disc

And did that for everything, Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music, etc..  

The only thing (user files wise) I left to reside on the SSD are the applications.

I'll eventually find a way to modify Earlybird (Thunderbird Aurora) so that it saves all it's stuff to the 2tb mechanical disc rather than the SSD.

And with everything mirrored via Time Machine and CCC, I should be in good shape if anything ever happens and I have to move my stuff to a new machine.

Now that the hard stuff is over and behind me I have other questions about other tweaks but I'll just start new question threads when those arise.

Thanks again very much guys!  

I recovered my email !!  Woo hoo !!  Thank you CooSee !!

THAT was a huge relief!

I also learned about 'nohidden' and that led me to find other things saved on that old disc that I very much needed to recover !

Now think by the end of the week I should have recovered all my lost stuff.  I'm hoping to recover my old Safari, Chrome and Firefox stuff.  I would love to get back the browser histories, passwords, cookies, etc..
That would be great!  I ~think~ I can do it......

So far, so good, I'm well on the way to being back on the road again only this time with a very serious machine.  No more Mickey Mouse antique junk like before..  

CooSee, on 21 January 2013 - 12:20 AM, said:

I couldn't get that one to work.  It gave me the same grief I had with my old and now dead machine.  I'm certain that because of it it was corrupting the CMOS NVRAM and played a major role in the demise of that machine.  It never had sound, app store didn't work, wouldn't boot from hard disc, etc..  Lots and lots of problems, not to mention, it was unstable.  When I tried it on here it came up just exactly like the old one, no sound, no boot from hard disc.  I walked away from it and ended up doing one of the other methods I found on here.  I'm so tired now I can't think which one it was by name, all I can remember is install.zip..

And now it's fully operational, 101% in every way and I'm very happy about that.  Now all that's left is to tweak it to my personal preference.  I'm almost there...  
Thanks again and good night..  

Ok, I ~finally~ got it!  My machine is now 100% up and running and ~everything~ works properly!  Woo hoo!!!

It was NOT easy and I went through the gauntlet trying everything, over and over and over until I finally got it working!

Now, I have what is probably a weird question..

I'm booting and running the OS from the OCZ SSD disk.  But it's only 180gb and I don't want to store any files on it other than apps and the basic OS.

I have a brand new 2tb 6gbs data III disk internal in the box for data storage.  I also have a 3gbs data II disk in a USB 3.0 external dock that I plan to use as my Time Machine drive.
Currently that drive has all my old files and data from the dead Lion machine.  After I move everything from it onto the new internal disk I'll erase it and activate it as the TM disk.
Eventually I will put more large disks in the box, I figure about one 2tb disc every other month.  I've got more than enough room in the box for discs, I think I can fit 10 in there.
I'll need to get a sata multiplier or a sata controller on PCI.  Which ever works best I suppose.  But that's down the road a ways.

Anyway, here's what I really need to do, like ASAP.

For instance, on the primary disk, the SSD, it is disk0s2, it's mounted as /
all my folders such as Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, etc..  are like
/Users/dee/Documents, /Users/dee/Downloads, etc etc etc....

What I want to do is change things so that rather than the system using THOSE directories, it will instead use the same named directories that I created on the 2tb disk.

It's disk1s2 and is mounted as /Volumes/Mountain_Lion

I want the system to use it as follows,  
/Volumes/Mountain_Lion/Users/dee/Documents, /Volumes/Mountain_Lion/Users/dee/Downloads, /Volumes/Mountain_Lion/Users/dee/Music, /Volumes/Mountain_Lion/Users/dee/Pictures, etc etc etc..

In Linux I could use the ln command to link to directories in other places.  But I'm not sure how to go about that and maybe there's a better way in OSX.

I know for instance that you can edit something to change where screenshots are saved.  I despise that it defaults to saving them to your desktop.  I made a directory in my Documents folder called "Screenshots" and edited some stuff ( http://osxdaily.com/...on-in-mac-os-x/ ) and fixed that !

Quote

What I'm hoping is that there is an equally simple way to change everything else..  ??  Yes?

I do not want to keep things on the SSD other than applications, I want things saved on the regular hard disc.  Especially email.  I have may gigabytes of years and years of emails that I've been migrating from machine to machine over the years and I want that on the hard disc too.  I believe I saw one of you guys mentioned it's buried in /Library by default.  I need to find a way to change that too.  I know Apple doesn't approve of people tweaking things their own way but frankly, I don't give a flip.  I have my reasons for doing things my way and I'll do them even if Steve Jobs is spinning in his grave..

Anyway, thank you very much guys for helping me get this beast running!  It was quite the challenge and I'm quite proud of my little black box here..

Peace!  

Ok, trial and error time..

Just trying all the options.  I tried that "other guy's stuff" (it starts with Uni and ends with beast) and it installed ML on my new machine.
Everything works with two exceptions.  No sound and won't boot from the hard disk.  Same exact problem I had with the Lion install I ran for the past year.

It saw my bluetooth, my iPhone 5, the App Store works, updates work, etc...  Everything seems good except no sound.
And no boot from hard disk..  

Well, it's 1am and I'm done for tonight.  I'll try again tomorrow with some of the other methods you guys have suggested.

Oh, and I'm going to need some help getting my stuff off of the old hard disk from the dead Mac.
I popped it in a USB3 drive bay and it mounted right up.  I can browse to it in finder and there's all my files.

BUT, I can't find the data stored by apps.  Like my email !  I was using thunderbird (Actually the Earlybird daily build) and I had imported years worth of email from my old Linux box into it.  There are a TON of emails on there that I absolutely can not lose!  I have to somehow import them from that dead drive into the new machine.  I browsed the disk but I could not find where the emails are stored.  There is probably well over 6 gigabytes of email I have to recover.  

There's a lot of stuff on that disk I have to get back.

Well, I'll give it another go in the morning..

Thanks..