Where Ollama Save Models on Mac

If you are downloading a few models to try out, you will quickly see your disk space start running down. Thankfully if you have external storage, its pretty easy to move files off of your main drive.

~/.ollama

tree ~/.ollama -s -h --du

[ 17G] /Users/steve/.ollama
├── [1.7K] history
├── [ 387] id_ed25519
├── [ 81]  id_ed25519.pub
│
└── [ 17G] models
  ├─── [ 17G] blobs
      ├── [ 337] sha256-0dbc577651fb5aa...d82e8cf1b2ba38f71481b
      ├── [3.6G] sha256-3a43f93b78ec50f...d51a6f7495e48486e0dac
      ├── [ 487] sha256-40fb844194b25e4...add73d8944d32445c09fd
      ├── [ 12K] sha256-4fa551d4f938f68...0753248d530364aeea40f
      ├── [4.7K] sha256-590d74a5569b8a2...fdda195527073c7f502fc
      ├── [4.3G] sha256-6a0746a1e20ff6e...07de94ca2aa-partial
      ├── [ 56] sha256-6a0746a1ec1aef3e...94de94ca2aa-partial-0
      ├── [ 64] sha256-6a0746a1ec1aef3e...07de94ca2aa-partial-1
      ├── [ 64] sha256-6a0746a1ec1aef3e...07de94ca2aa-partial-2
      ├── [ 62] sha256-6a0746a1ec1aef3e...96de94ca2aa-partial-3
      ├── [ 65] sha256-6a0746a1ec1aef3e...07de94ca2aa-partial-4
      ├── [ 59] sha256-6a0746a1ec1aef3e...7c9684ca2aa-partial-5
  └─── [4.0K] manifests
    └─── [3.8K] registry.ollama.ai
      └──── [3.7K] library

        └──── [1.1K] codellama
           └── [1004] latest

        ├── [1.8K] deepseek-r1
          ├── [ 857] 7b
          └── [ 857] latest

        └── [ 660] llama3
          └── [ 564] text

How to copy models off and on

So the hard part is the models are a few different files, so you can just copy the largest file off, but if you want ollama to not think the model is available you will want to copy all of the files in blob and manifest folder. Check the date added as an easy way to see which files are for which model. It would of been nice if they put an extra layer of folder named with the model but they didn’t.

Can you use a fast flash drive to store models?

It really depends on the speed of the flash drive. Your internal SSD will always beat any external SSD or flash drive. So maybe use a flash drive more for archival storage.