Linotype Fontexplorer and Mac HDD and SSD setup help

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Posted:
in Mac Software edited September 2015

Hello folks, I'm on a Mac Pro 3,1 and have been running an HDD setup on my aging system. Finally switched to an Apricorn Velocity Solo card with a Crucial SSD to become my Application/System boot volume while still pointing to my home directory on the HDD. Works like a charm and great performance boost the problem I'm running into is with FontExplorer. Seems to want to not acknowledge any of the user data or preferences and I really don't want to reinstall it and start over as it seems it needs a user on the local boot drive perhaps... and I want to keep the user data off the SSD. I was wondering if someone might be able to help me here? To point to my user on the HDD I was booting into the SSD and then going to advanced options in users and groups and selecting the home directory on the HDD and restarting.

 

Currently, my setup is as follows...



MAIN BOOT Spinner HD:

MainHD/Applications/FontExplorer X Pro

MainHD/Users/myuser/Library/Application Support/Linotype/FontExplorer X/FontExplorer X.fexdb

MainHD/Users/myuser/Library/Preferences/com.linotype.FontExplorerX.plist

MainHD/Users/myuser/Library/Caches/com.linotype.FontExplorerX/


SEPARATE INTERNAL DRIVE SPINNER HD*

AnotherHD/Fonts/Font Library/

(FontExplorer not set to organize font library. I am doing that manually.)



What I am trying to do is



MAIN NEW BOOT SSD:

SSD/Applications/FontExplorer X Pro

MainHD/Users/myuser/Library/Application Support/Linotype/FontExplorer X/FontExplorer X.fexdb

MainHD/Users/myuser/Library/Preferences/com.linotype.FontExplorerX.plist
MainHD/Users/myuser/Library/Caches/com.linotype.FontExplorerX/

(Leaving the Font Library where it was on another internal drive)



Thoughts? Since the User files are left on the old Main Boot Spinner... there is no active user directory on the SSD to symlink anything to. Support for this software hasn’t really led anywhere.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,554moderator
    pacmanz wrote: »
    I want to keep the user data off the SSD.

    Is this because there's too little space? It'll speed things up being on the SSD as caches will read/write faster. You can put larger subfolders e.g iTunes libraries elsewhere while the main Users folder is on the SSD.
    pacmanz wrote: »
    Since the User files are left on the old Main Boot Spinner... there is no active user directory on the SSD to symlink anything to.

    Have you tried symlinking the whole Users folder? In terminal, you'd type:

    ln -s /Volumes/MainHD/Users /

    while booted on the SSD. This should create a Users alias on the SSD at the root level and may even allow you to avoid selecting advanced options when booting. You may have to put sudo in front as the boot drive root can be write-protected:

    sudo ln -s /Volumes/MainHD/Users /
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  • Reply 2 of 2
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member

    I have no idea why you would want to do this. I would personally just use an ssd with enough space to put all of that in one place with ~30% drive space remaining. It's still a bad idea to completely fill a drive, even an ssd.

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