My G4 machine has only a 34MB hard drive, and over the past 5 years it's gotten pretty full.
I need to free up space. I've already gotten rid of "non-essential" applications and files...and already store most of my data on an external hard drive.
I've got 2 approaches that make sense to me:
1.Install another internal hard drive and move my database of emails to the other hard drive.
2.Move my email to an existing external hard drive (a cheaper alternative).
Either way, I'd like to move my mail off the drive with the system software--before the next OS upgrade. I tried to find this process in Mail's Help and at Apple's website, but with no luck--discussions seemed to be limited to backups, not accessing .mbox folders in other locations.
Has anybody done this? Any guidelines or step-by-steps for getting it done without losing my email?
Here's my first suggestion -
Run Monolingual 1.3.4. This utility will remove unneeded languages from your applications (I've recovered up to 3GB, but I'm more of an extreme example). Be careful though. Some applications don't like having some of their language files removed. You can also remove unneeded code (64bit x86 code does nothing on a G4 ).
Next - see if your email service offers IMAP support, or if your email program has an option to keep mail on a POP mail server. IMAP keeps mail on the server and only deletes it from the server if you delete the locally cached message. There's usually an option to keep not download attachments until you want to. This will keep most of your email on the server and off your laptop.
Last - if you have to move your mail to another drive it will depend on your email program. With Apple's Mail you'll want to copy the folder ~/Library/Mail/ (where ~ is your home directory) to the other drive, and then make an alias of your new Mail folder in your Library folder. Then when Mail launches it'll see the alias, and follow it to the other drive.