New M4 Mini with external SSD - NO access to iCloud Drive.

Question

New M4 Mini with external SSD - NO access to iCloud Drive.

I've bought a new M4 Mini to replace my iMac, and have set up my account on an external SSD because the internal storage option was so expensive. Everything runs great until I get around to trying to share files with my other devices, which I have always done using iCloud Drive. But nothing shows up in the finder other than a link to Settings for iCloud. Sync there is turned on, but when I click 'learn more' I find (from Set up iCloud Drive on all of your devices - Apple Support (NZ)): "Note: If your Home folder isn’t located on your internal disk, or is a non-APFS volume, you must move the Home folder to an internal disk before you can set up iCloud Drive." It would have been good to know this before ordering my new Mac.

Ironically, it looks like I can use iCloud Drive just fine from my Windows PC; but only Dropbox, Google Drive or some other file sharing from my new Mac. What a pain.

Mac mini, macOS 26.0

Posted on Nov 1, 2025 10:11 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Old Toad

Level 10

215,196 points

Nov 4, 2025 11:30 AM in response to PeeDee768947385

For simplicity's sake I recommend the following:

1 - boot from your internal SSD.

2 - erase and format the external SSD as APFS

2 - copy the Documents, Pictures, Movies and Music folders to the external SSD and rename them Documents-2, Pictures-2, etc.

3 - made sure the Photos, Music and Movies libraries work as expected on the EHD.

4 - once you're sure the libraries in #3 work you can delete only the contents of the Documents, Pictures, Music and Movies folders. Do not delete the folders them selves.

5 - now all features in the macOS will be available, iCloud Drive, AI, etc. to you.

6 - have another EHD that's about 2-3 times the size of your boot and external drives to use for Time Machine backups of those drives.

I've been running that way for a few years with no issues with Macs that have a small boot drive.

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Answer 2

Nov 2, 2025 4:39 AM in response to PeeDee768947385

There are three options you have as a work around to this issue is instead of moving the home folder to the external drive.

One, keep the iCloud stuff on the internal and set the option to optimize iCloud storage which will keep least accessed files in the cloud and not use up internal space. Then move every thing else like documents, photos, music, and movies to the external drive. Note: Home folder remains on the internal drive.

Second, with a sufficiently fast external SSD, you can create an external bootable volume and boot to it and use it all the time as your main drive with everything on it. The downside of this is for whatever reason, certain services will not be available like Apple Intelligence, Wallet (which sort of makes sense), etc. (iCloud drive is not affected).

Third, if you are still within the return window, return your current Mini and get one with a larger internal drive for your needs.

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Answer 3

Nov 2, 2025 2:45 PM in response to woodmeister50

Yes, that is what I had understood to be the options. However, I checked my wife's new iMac M4, which also has an internal boot disk and external home folder and it works with iCloud storage just fine. She set this up only last week, and encouraged me to wait and let the system sort itself out. This morning when I booted the option to sync Finder to iCloud storage was available, and it's been syncing since. So 'learn more' document possibly out of date, policy changed, whatever. I'll take the win.

Thanks for your prompt suggestions.

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