iPod Portable Home Directories!
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6/27/07 OS X supports Portable Home Directories - the ability to put all your User account and application data on a disk volume other than the boot volume. Why would you want to do this? Because you can take your user account data with you on an iPod for use on another Mac. You can back the user data up independently of the OS. You can defrag a separate volume with the users data on it. It makes your Mac much faster. You can reinstall without having to copy all your user account data back to the new volume. This article explains how you can move your Users account data to an iPod but the same techniques will work just as well for any separate partition on your system. Keep in mind if you connect your iPod via USB and use that volume as your Users directory, it will be slower. USB is always slower than SATA or ATA! Having said that, here we go: What you will need: - A disk-based iPod (flash iPods won't work). - Some way to connect the iPod to your Mac (USB or Firewire cable). - A Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 or later. - iTunes 7.0 or later. - Apple's disk utility.
The basic process is as follows. I'll summarize the steps first, then describe each in detail. 1. Backup your iPod. It will be erased. 2. Plug your iPod in and launch iTunes. 3. Using iTunes, restore your iPod to factory settings. 4. Partition you iPod using Disk Utility into 2 partitions - one for normal iPod-stuff and one for your Users directory. 5. Copy your Users directory to the 2nd partition on the iPod from your Mac. 6. Blow away the Users directory on your Mac and instead make a symbolic link on it to the Users directory on your iPod. 7. Run iTunes again and sync your media files back to the iPod's 1st partition. That's it!
Step 1: Backup your iPod. If you have any fliles on your iPod you want (especially if you've used it in disk mode), back them up to some other device. Just drag the files from your iPod to some other device.
Step 2: Plug your iPod in and launch iTunes. Plug in your iPod to your Mac using an iPod USB or Firewaire cable. Wait a few second. Open the iTunes application from the Dock. The iPod will mount on the desktop like a hard drive (see below).
3. Using iTunes, restore your iPod to factory settings. When iTunes opens, click on the iPod icon in the list on the left and then on the "Summary" tab at the top of the window. Click the Restore button on the right. You will be prompted if you really want to do this. Answer yes to restore your iPod to factory settings. It will take a few minutes for your iPod to start up and reset (you may see a black screen with an Apple logo on your iPod while this is happening). Uncheck "Automatically sync songs to my iPod" after the reset to avoid having iTunes start copying files to it.
4. Partition you iPod using Disk Utility into 2 partitions - one for normal iPod-stuff and one for your Users directory. Locate the Apple Disk Utility program in /Applications/Utilities/ on your startup disk. Open the utilty. You'll see a window like this:
Click on the Orange Firewire disk icon on the left side (not on the white iPod icon). You will now see a pane like this. Click on the Partition tab as shown:
Now from the Volume Scheme popup menu, select "2 partitions":
You want to create two partitions. It's very important to note that the second partition in the list is the one iTunes will use for its files. The first partition on the iPod will be used for your Users directory. I make my Users volume 5GB and the other partition 75GB out of an 80GB iPod. 5GB seems to be a good size for a Users volume. Most user directories are around 500MB in size and you want to leave lots of free space on the volume in case the user directories grow. Select each volume in the large grey area one at a time and set its values on the right. The larger of the two volumes for iPod's use must be Journaled. I recommend leaving the Users volume unjournaled. Uncheck "Install Mac OS 9 Drivers" for both volumes. |
