Putting the "Users" directory on a different drive

Post by **Canis** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:11 am

Is it possible to make the default "Users" directory on a second hard drive, so when OS X starts up it uses the account folder on the second drive as the home folder? I'd like to do this because every now and then I get the urge to re-format for shits and giggles, and if there's a way to just point OS X to the second drive for the User directories then that would be great and easy to do when I dick around with the main drive.

Post by **Canis** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:13 am

For instance, I'd like the desktop to have "Macintosh HD" on it, but would also like the second drive to appear as "Users" on the desktop and have that actually be the Users directory that the system recognizes.

Post by **NCG_Mike** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 10:10 pm

I've seen it done across a network with NetInfo. Essentially, all user homes were NFS shares that the local NeXTSTEP boxes would see under /Network.

What'll be important is the mount point for your external drive. You can mirror the current setup by copying the directories over to the external drive and then mounting the drive on boot time. Of course, if you don't have the drive turned on then you'd be screwed *but* you would actually end up in the original directory if you logged in ;-)

Post by **Dave** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 6:37 am

ditto, symbolic links and macosxhints.com have your answers