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iwtunx

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 22, 2022
34
2
Is there a way to add an external drive and increase volume availability for internal? I.e. Out of space on internal drive, have apps that MUST install to/use internal storage, can't add internal storage. I tried moving the vendor's dir to an external and creating a link but the software checks and didnt use the linked dir.
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,395
12,521
Internal and external drives are "separate" drives.

How large is your internal drive?
What are you trying to install onto it?

If the internal is "too small", perhaps you need to "off-load" unnecessary stuff to the external...
 

iwtunx

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 22, 2022
34
2
Internal and external drives are "separate" drives.

How large is your internal drive?
What are you trying to install onto it?

If the internal is "too small", perhaps you need to "off-load" unnecessary stuff to the external...
I only have a 250gb internal and I cant afford to pay to upgrade.
 

arw

macrumors 65816
Aug 31, 2010
1,094
857
"Off-loading" does not mean a paid upgrade but exactly what you already tried - moving files from the internal to an external drive and then linking it if necessary.
Like @Fishrrman asked, what is the application in question?
How did you link the directories? With a simple alias or an actual symlink?

As an example, if you have a folder named "VendorDirectory" on the root of your external drive, you can create a symlink to said folder in your user's "~/Library/Application Support/" folder with:
ln -s /Volumes/YourExternalDrive/VendorDirectory ~/Library/Application\ Support/

 
Last edited:

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2020
620
250
Espoo, Finland
What kind of drive is the bigger, external one? If it's Thunderbolt you could just migrate the OS to it and use that as primary drive. I've done this for a while with my old M1 Mac which had a small 256GB internal drive. I just bought a fast and large Thunderbolt drive and installed macOS on it. Worked beautifully without having to deal with symlinks etc, which as you have found out don't work with some applications.
 
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