OS on external SSD, leave data on spinning drive?

Tech Support
9

Here are my notes on part of the process I followed:

Scenario:

Got new 250 GB SSD and 2 TB internal HD to upgrade 2010 iMac
Fantastic decision for $500 incl. labor and external housing for my old HD, it’s like I have a brand new computer (except of course no Retina display, handoff)
Challenge was how to migrate iTunes bc not enough space on the SSD for music
Also concerned bc I kept my Apple Music subscription after the trial incl. iCloud music library and was concerned that if I ended up with a situation where iTunes couldn’t find files, it would start replacing them with Apple Music equivalents (which don’t always match & have other reported issues as you know…). I also wanted to end up with the iTunes database (but not the media) on the SSD. This was all potentially complicated by the fact that I hadn’t backed up iTunes in the way Apple advises, or even used the default location (Music/iTunes/iTunes Music); instead I had it all self-organized in folders by letter – but not consistently so j-k, u-v and some others were in combined folders…).
No guidance online for this triply weird scenario
Could experiment since I had a complete backup which wouldn’t be changed.

Here’s what I did:

  1. Copied contents of old HD Music folder to a folder on the new HD (User Files/username/Music) then ejected the old HD
  2. Turned off my wifi so I had no active internet connection (hence no connection to Apple Music)
  3. Created a symlink from Users/username to User Files/username/Music on the new HD
  4. Took a deep breath and started iTunes
  5. Everything worked as expected - iTunes Store warned me it couldn’t connect, Apple Music playlists were greyed out, but all local music and playlists were working fine.
  6. Turned on wifi, put in my Apple ID password a couple times, updated payment info, and all looked well except Apple Music playlist contents were still grey
  7. Restarted iTunes - Apple Music came back

At this point everything looked good except the iTunes Library was on the HD not the SSD.

  1. Copied the updated iTunes database (whole folder XXX) to Users/username, and to a temporary backup location in case the next step failed.
  2. Deleted the iTunes database at User Files/username/Music/xxxxx (on the HD) that I had just copied
  3. Started iTunes again
  4. Changed the library location in prefs>Advanced to User Files/username/Music
  5. Everything worked but I realized that when I moved the library to the SSD I also moved 40 GB of iOS app backups
  6. Consolidated files, checked by reveal in finder that apps in iTunes in fact were using newly consolidated files on HD, and deleted old iOS backups
  7. Moved cruft from old manual organization to a Music archive directory (which also had stuff I’d previously removed from iTunes in order to get below the 25k song limit)
  8. Only problem left was that consolidation had also created about 50 gb of duplicate movies
  9. Used Macpaw Gemini to delete duplicate originals

So at the end of the day
Blazing fast library on SSD with media on HD
Clean organization and purge of dupes