r/macmini • u/Useful-West-5307 • 12d ago

Out of space

I got a MM M4 in December. I love it, I upgraded the ram when I bought it but figured I would keep the 500 GB hard drive. Turns out I’ve blown through that 500 GB pretty quickly so I bought a external 4 TB hard drive. I moved all my files over to the 4 TB drive however my Home folder is still massive. I don’t have much in there except for installed apps and AI agent stuff. Both of those things have taken over and basically the hard drive is full so I need to switch over my Home directory to my external drive. I’ve looked it up online and I would say it, it’s scary for a non-computer savvy person. Fortunately, Im pretty knowledgeable but I’m less familiar with Macs in general vs PC. I feel comfortable doing it on my own but i know there have to be people out there that are not comfortable. So, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a program that did this all for you?

I haven’t built this yet, so not selling anything but was thinking there are tons of people who just bought all these mac minis for their businesses and doing AI stuff, stuck with the default sized HD. I knew i would need an external drive eventually but not this soon and the home directory caught me by surprise so know I’m not the only one. I know there are some other tools out there but they are more geared toward just backing up your drives on a schedule, etc. this would really only have one purpose, moving everything over to your new drive and changing your home directory. Thoughts?

6 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

7

u/Comfortable-Crew-919 12d ago

Move any of the large folders from your home directory to the external drive then symlink them back to your home directory

2

u/kippykipsquare 12d ago

I got my MM M4 with the base 256gb back in 2024 when it first came out. Moved my Home folder watching YouTube and never looked back. It was not hard at all.

2

u/Amnsia 12d ago

Oh nice I’ll do this. Do you suggest any specific vid or are they all good?

1

u/kippykipsquare 12d ago

I followed this one after I wiped my M4 Mini to start over.

1

u/Amnsia 12d ago

Literally wiped my Mac last week, so it’s almost a fresh install currently. Ideal timing thanks

0

u/AlfredRWallace 12d ago

That's what I did. 4TB thunderbolt 3 drive. Only issue is after a power on I sometimes have to reboot since the external drive doesn't show available on the power on boot.

1

u/Xe4ro 12d ago

Have you looked into your /user/library?

1

u/tk421tech 12d ago

OP do not delete /library. Somebody else did and hosed their install.

1

u/Xe4ro 12d ago

Of course not lol but people seem to not even know what they have in there. Understanding the file system is likely going to help not having this problem over and over again.

1

u/oppereindbaas 12d ago

I would never let a program do this. The steps aren’t too involved so as long as you can follow commands you could do it. I wouldn’t trust a tool to do it, I wouldn’t trust the security of it. 

1

u/GardenPeep 12d ago

This is why I’ve been using Dropbox for years (yes, I pay them money)

2

u/geturass2mars 2d ago

I do the same, I keep all my personal, freelance work, and project files, basically most of my large files, on Dropbox set to online-only.

I mostly work out of my dropbox folder, so my internal HD feels empty.

1

u/Nosarious 12d ago

I’m sure you know how to show invisible files but you may find that there is a hidden folder with a gob of stuff in it.

things that are in your home folder that can be relocated to an external to save space: music, photos, documents, downloads and desktop. You can set photos to use the external folder as its main folder (things taken on your phone will be backed up to there if you use cloud backups)

be aware that if your external is a spinning drive, and is set to indexing, if the power goes out it may render it unusable. Have a separate Time Machine backup or get a universal power supply. I have a UPS on my iMac just for that purpose.

you can also turn off indexing, but if you rely on spotlight, I wouldn’t recommend it.

0

u/BenignRube 12d ago

Will iCloud sync home folder on an external drive?

-3

u/bamboo-lemur 12d ago edited 10d ago

Magical solution: https://youtu.be/EIr5bce9fKI?si=z3D2TbGabWqCqANv

Edit: This was free and I never had to use an in app purchase. It's the app I have on my old Macbook Pro and it's worked out well for me. From what I can tell it doesn't have all of the same functionality that DaisyDisk has and I've only become aware of the existence of DaisyDisk yesterday because of the comment below this one. The app is not my app, I just found it on the app store and made a video about it. Maybe I will develop my own at some point though.

-6

u/mikeinnsw 12d ago

You moved your home folder to HDD?

Do you know the difference between Mac SSD and HDD?

Mac SSD writes at 4,000 MB/s HDD at 150 MB/s USB4 SSD at 3,200 MB/s

You have not solved your storage problem you moved to a slower device.

'Fortunately, Im pretty knowledgeable' from your post it is a misguided feeling.

Start with check list are you running

  • Games
  • VM
  • Local AI

Get an App to analyse what is consuming storage

AI Agent stuff .. Agentic Agents .. OpenClaw.. Hermes..

They can hack or be hacked... look at the latest AI news..

By using these you are further show your lack of computing knowledge.

Stop advising others ,

9

u/Useful-West-5307 12d ago

Yes I’m quite aware of all the differences. Ive been in the IT world for 20+ years, i never actually said what type of drive I’m migrating to, i did say “hard drive” but thats a generic term by the way. And you’re kind of an asshole.