Can I move Photos and iTunes app completely off an M2 Mac mini to keep from using up internal storage. Can only afford the entry model as I am living off a very fixed income. Trying to keep from using up the tiny 256gb of internal and also guessing by doing so will keep down the wear of the internal as it won’t be written over and over the internal. Thanks for reading and responding. One of my good friends was my Mac guy and he passed so I need help. I only have an ancient mini ( maxed out at the time ) that I use to record my music. I need a computer that can go safely online and do some little work with photos, music, and some browsing. I believe I did this with help from my friend almost 20 years ago with a power mac G5….
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M2 mini question ( external )
- Thread starter CompuDuh
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I was under the impression that the photos and music could be sent to an external drive. Is it possible to keep the app itself but have it send the content to the external. I have been receiving info that this or something like this is possible. I know things have changed like being unable to boot from an external ( which I have no interest in ) but would think many would want to keep their photos from their phones and iTunes downloads stored on an external.
Yes, your photos and music etc can be stored externally to save on space
Perhaps the M1 Mac Mini would also serve your purpose? Unsure of your location, but in the UK on eBay there are many decent Mac mini M1 with 512GB storage for ~£100 less than a new M2 with 256gb. I recently bought one for a colleague as they will only be working on browsing, emails, spreadsheets and light photo editing. Looked almost brand new when it arrived as they're not that old...
You absolutely can move the library files to an external drive and access them. It's not too difficult to do either.
If you hold the option key while launching the app, it will open a dialog that will allow you to point the app to a different Library.
Process to make it happen:
Make a copy of your existing Music and Photos directories from your home directory on the external drive.
Connect the external drive to your new Mac.
Hold Option while launching the App, click the button to choose a new Library location and navigate to the Library file in the Music or Photos directory depending on the app.
In the Music App settings, in the Files tab, you have the ability to change the location of the default library to the external drive as well.
In the Photos App, in the General tab, you can choose to point the app to a default library on an external drive as well.
If you hold the option key while launching the app, it will open a dialog that will allow you to point the app to a different Library.
Process to make it happen:
Make a copy of your existing Music and Photos directories from your home directory on the external drive.
Connect the external drive to your new Mac.
Hold Option while launching the App, click the button to choose a new Library location and navigate to the Library file in the Music or Photos directory depending on the app.
In the Music App settings, in the Files tab, you have the ability to change the location of the default library to the external drive as well.
In the Photos App, in the General tab, you can choose to point the app to a default library on an external drive as well.
I had my 128gb 13 inch i5 Macbook Pro for several years and due to its small internal SSD of 128gb, i had my music library on an external Samsung T5 SSD Drive that's been connected to the Macbook at all times. Now, i just got a new M2 Macbook Pro with 256GB internal storage so i can finally afford to have my music library which is about 50gb in size on the internal drive of my Mac. What is the proper procedure to transfer my library which is used to being on an external drive over to the new Macbook Pro's internal drive? I had BigSur running on the old Intel Macbook and the new M2 Macbook is running Sonoma. I tried copying over the iTunes library from the external drive into the Music folder on the new M2 Macbook and then pressing option while clicking the Music app on the new Macbook Pro and choosing select library at which point i selected the "iTunes Library.itl" file and the Muisc app on the M2 Macbook loaded up but my music library is not up-to date at all and is missing 2-3 years of content so i'm a bit puzzled as to what i did wrong. Thank you in advance.