[MacOS] move blockchain data to external hdd

Hi, I don’t have much space on my main macbook pro ssd so wanted to move the blockchain data to an SD I have always mounted on my laptop.
I’ve changed the --db-path option for cardano-node inside /Applications/Daedalus.app/Contents/MacOS/Daedalus to poin to the new location but actually moiving the files there has proved to be much harder than expected.
Depending on who you ask the data folder inside ~/Library/Application Support/Daedalus/DB-1.0/blocks has wildly varying sizes:


  • 634MB according to Finder
  • 875MB when compressed
  • 4.8G according to du

At the time of writing the data folder contains 1.2M files approximately 600Bytes long, I think this unusual amount of minuscule files is not handled well by some file systems because I repeatedly tried to move it to my SD card but failed because the folder size bloats disproportionately and ends up filling up all the available space (64GB) before finishing the transfer.
My SD card is formatted with ExFat while my hdd is APFS. Before trying to move all my files on the SD card and reformat it with a different file system I was wondering if anyone had encountered the same difficulties in moving blockchain data to a different location.
I’ve seen on github there is a proposal to fix this 1.2M microscopic files madness (for comparison ethereum chain data is in the orderer of a few thousand files) so if no one has any idea I’ll just wait for their proposal to be implemented before trying again.