What is the equivalent of a Drive C on a Mac

I'm following an installation guide for MongoDB and it says extract some zip file to a folder.

I'm on Mac and it has folders like Download, Desktop, Music, etc., but where is a more real place to extract my files into? I want something like C:\MyDBFiles that I could create on Windows...

3 Answers

The file system used by *nix operating systems is fundamentally different from that used by DOS, Windows, etc.

• On Windows, each partition has a drive letter (C:, D:, etc.).

• On Mac OS X, each partition has a mount point (/, /home).

I am on Mac and it has like Download, Desktop, Music, etc... but where is a more real place to extract my files into? I want something like C:\MyDBFiles that I could create on Windows...

There are no drive letters on Mac OS X, sorry.

There nothing unreal about Desktop. It's actually ~/Desktop, where ~ is your home directory (usually /home/username).

Without root privileges, you only have access to ~ anyway. All your personal files belong there. Consider it your C:\.

See also: Filesystem Hierarchy Standard - Wikipedia

You can follow the guide at it will install MongoDB under /usr/local. It also contains instructions to create the data directory under /data

If you install Homebrew (and follow steps in the above tutorial) it will download MongoDB, extract to the right locations, setup the symlinks, etc. for you.

While the other answers are all true, I'd like to suggest you create a sparse bundle in disk utility, and use this for your install. It will act as a "virtual" drive - use it just for your install.

Nice thing is you can freely move it around and don't have to worry about getting in conflict with installations of other programs or your system. It's worth gold when you want to clean/update your install in a few months...