How to move all system caches to another HD ?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I just installed a second HD (Maxtor 250 GB) in my dual G5. My current system (Tiger 10.4.7) is installed on the first HD (Maxtor 160 GB), and I want to move all caches to the second HD. How to do that ? Any idea ? What system utility can do it ?



I'm also interested to move Safari's caches to the second HD ...



Take note : I don't want to do some funky UNIX command lines in terminal...
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 27
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Okay... can I ask why?



    I mean, it's *possible*, but it's not exactly for the faint-hearted. Terminal use will be required.



    So... why do you want to do this?
  • Reply 2 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    Why ? I want top performances on this system.



    I'm using many disk intensive programs, and the system lags very often, despite the huge amount of ram on this machine (4 GB).
  • Reply 3 of 27
    Why don't you keep your system files (and your iTunes) on one HD and the rest on the second?



    I put my iTunes on my main disk because it's always spinning, so you don't have to spin up the second drive just to load a song.
  • Reply 4 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    I'm thinking about the best strategy (performances wise), and I'm not sure yet what is the best solution. How to distributes files and programs on two internal HDs ?
  • Reply 5 of 27
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Hmm. Moving swap files over is generally only going to help if you have a small amount of RAM - if you've got a large amount, it's not going to do much, if anything.



    While splitting disk access across multiple drives can help performance, I don't see how it's likely going to be helping here, in general.



    What apps, if you don't mind me asking? Might be easier to recommend an approach that way that doesn't involve the low-layer jiggery.



    And they're both internal? One bus or two?
  • Reply 6 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    The most lagging app of all, the queen of disk access, is Celestia. It's an awesome, marvelous, incredible FREE astronomy software. It needs every computer ressources (ram, video card memory, HD access, processor, etc). I'm also running at the same time several other programs, like iTunes (Celestia is even better with some space music), Safari, Mail, Photoshop, and many others...
  • Reply 7 of 27
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Huh - I just downloaded it to take a peek (nice app, thanks ), and the only thing it was chewing up was CPU time - Activity Monitor wasn't showing it hammering the disk at all. \



    Very strange.
  • Reply 8 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kickaha


    Huh - I just downloaded it to take a peek (nice app, thanks ), and the only thing it was chewing up was CPU time - Activity Monitor wasn't showing it hammering the disk at all. \



    Very strange.



    LOL ROFL LMAO ! (sorry, couldn't resist !)



    Do you know what size it takes on your HD ? This is the base installation, about 30 MB (or so) only. If you download many of the zillions addons made for that app, and the huge textures set made for all moons, planets, asteroids, all at high resolution, it will take no less than 8 GB on your HD !!!! You just installed the base package ! Just check the Motherlode and you'll freak out :



    http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/



    ;-)
  • Reply 9 of 27
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Ahhhhhhhh, okay. I blame you if my drive melts.
  • Reply 10 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    So, what is the best strategy with two internal drives ? The OS on the smallest ? What else on the same drive ? All documents on the second HD ? Is that it ?
  • Reply 11 of 27
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Well, I'm in a similar situation at the moment, but a little different. I'm *cough* upgrading an old B/W G3 server (pimpin' 350MHz!) to a G4 Cube. The Cube has a 20GB internal drive that I'm going to divvy up into two partitions for OS installations (always have a fall back on your server!), and then there will be three 80GB drives and a 250GB drive via FireWire. (The big boy to back up the others.) The internal will be OS and swap space, and the other three drives will be laid out as:

    1) /Users

    2) /iTunes

    3) /Video



    I figure that'll keep things fairly well separated across the busses, and besides, it happens to be the drives I have on hand.



    The internal (0?) drive will be cranking on the ATA bus for swap, user files will be shuttling to/from 1, music playing off of 2, and video on its own just because they take a lot of space. Use ACLs to share the media files between user accounts, and voila.
  • Reply 12 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    Then how do you set the users directory to the non-OS drive ?
  • Reply 13 of 27
    marcukmarcuk Posts: 4,442member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kali


    The most lagging app of all, the queen of disk access, is Celestia. It's an awesome, marvelous, incredible FREE astronomy software. It needs every computer ressources (ram, video card memory, HD access, processor, etc). I'm also running at the same time several other programs, like iTunes (Celestia is even better with some space music), Safari, Mail, Photoshop, and many others...



    Thankyou so much for Celestia, has to be find of the century!
  • Reply 14 of 27
    meelashmeelash Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MarcUK


    Thankyou so much for Celestia, has to be find of the century!



    ditto!!!
  • Reply 15 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MarcUK


    Thankyou so much for Celestia, has to be find of the century!



    It is ! To me, it's simply the best app ever made for any computer.
  • Reply 16 of 27
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kali


    Then how do you set the users directory to the non-OS drive ?



    /Applications/NetInfo Manager.app



    Open /users/<username>, and edit the home field to be the drive path as:



    /Volumes/<drivename>/<path to new homespace>



    For instance, I've got:



    /Volumes/BigBlue/Users/<myacctname> in that field because it's in /Users/<myacctname> on the disk BigBlue.
  • Reply 17 of 27
    Wow, cool, I never realized Celestia had dowloadable texture libraries. Keen!



    PS Kickaha, a dedicated disk for porn videos? My god.
  • Reply 18 of 27
    So you have got an extra SATA drive, what is the original drive? For a superior hard drive performance boost, you shoudl set up a stripped RAID configuration, setting up boths the drives as single drive.



    2 of everything is fantastic SLi, Dual Cores/multi CPU's, RAID's etc



    Note: Ideally you must have identical if not very similiar specced drives for a RAID. Although Recently I dropped a 160gb SCSI drive into an existing RAID comprising of 5 150gb maxtors for an SQL server and everything is fine.
  • Reply 19 of 27
    kalikali Posts: 634member
    The first original drive is a Maxtor 160 GB. The second drive is a Maxtor 250 GB. Both are Serial ATA, in a G5 dual 2.0 GHz. The OS (Tiger) is on the first drive.



    I'm still puzzled about my files configurations. Should I put all documents (and the users ?) on the second drive ? And leave all apps on the first drive ?
  • Reply 20 of 27
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by 1337_5L4Xx0R


    Wow, cool, I never realized Celestia had dowloadable texture libraries. Keen!



    PS Kickaha, a dedicated disk for porn videos? My god.



    Yeah, my wife's a packrat.
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