I'm wondering if it would be possible in Mojave to move the Users and Applications folders to separate HFS+ partitions without breakage? E.g. doing this or something similar:
- Symlinking an app folder on a HFS+ volume directly to
/Applicationsor to a subfolder of it - Symlinking a Users folder on a HFS+ volume directly to
/Users - …or just specify users' folders individually in system settings, pointing to a HFS+ volume
The goal is to minimize the surface area of APFS, which has proven to be too unreliable for me after I was forced to do two complete reinstalls of the OS in one week when APFS got corrupted — twice — and did not repair itself.
Reinstalling the OS is relatively quick compared to restoring from a time machine backup and redownloading lots of large apps, so I thought that if I could isolate most of my data onto HFS+ I would save time if for some reason I decide to upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave again. The next time APFS decides to make the entire volume inaccessible and the OS unbootable I would then only have to reinstall Mojave and link in the existing directories.
Related questions
- Can I move Applications to another partition?
- How to make the Users Directory a different partition in Snow Leopard?
Why is this question not a duplicate? This deals with Mojave, which is known to be unnecessarily picky about file systems.
Best Answer
Consider that if APFS reports checksum errors, and you reformat and reinstall, and the same thing happens again after a short while - then you could very well have a failing storage medium.
Instead of relocating various folders to a partition formatted with HFS+, it would be wise to thoroughly check your drive for errors and possibly replace the drive.