Comments on: How to Move the Home Folder in OS X – and Why

By: Markus

Markus — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:13:00 +0000

How to fix this?? I followed another guide saying this was Lion-compatible.. but no.. anyway to restore without reinstalling?

By: Workout Supplements

Workout Supplements — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:09:00 +0000

Deviating from the original setup can only cause problems for novice users.

By: Mitcha

Mitcha — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:59:00 +0000

does not work on lion … when you log in with the new user, with the home at the new partition, ” System Preferences ” wont open

By: angela shean

angela shean — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:26:00 +0000

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By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:42:00 +0000

You’re right Martin. That was the issue and looking back, the first comment answered this but I couldn’t follow his wording at the time. If you do change the name of either drive it needs to be done before re-pointing the Account in System prefs. If you do it afterwards, you need to go back into System Prefs to re-point to the new name.

I’ve also learned that if the two drive names are infact the same (both Macintosh HD for example), Time Machine gets confused and won’t back up either. If you leave the two drive names the same, the best bet is to use the “exclude folder/drive” option in Time Machine Options and add or “exclude” the SDD. Although renaming one or more of the drives before re-pouting seem like a better option.

Thanks for your input Martin.

By: Martin M.

Martin M. — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:36:00 +0000

This sounds like a workable idea, but you might want to log-in to a different administrative account while doing it so you’re not changing an active account while you perform the multi-step process.

By: Martin M.

Martin M. — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:07:00 +0000

Ian, since the volume names are part of the path you choose (/Volumes/shortname) when you moved the Home Directory in Advanced Options, it seems like that this will have to be updated when you rename it. So, in summary, I think that changing the SSD volume name it what caused your problem.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 20:35:00 +0000

I had this same error Bard, but I’m not sure from your description how to fix it. I’m not clear on what yo u meant by “YOU WILL HAVE TO MANUALLY UPDATE THIS PATH”. Which path and how do your update it?

Background: I bought a 40GB SSD drive for my Mac Pro which currently has 10.6.8 installed on a 1TB drive. I installed 10.6 on the new 40GB SSD to use as a boot disk, migrated my apps and user data to the new drive using Migration Assistant + Time Machine, then created a new user account on the new OS install. All of my apps were there on the new OS and new SSD drive, so I then followed the instruction in this article to re-map my original home folder (still on the original 1TB HDD) to store all of my home folder date etc. This seemed to work fine and I rebooted into the 40GB SSD with no issues. Then I changed the older Macintosh HD name to “Macintosh HDD” and renamed my new 40GB boot drive to “Macintosh SSD” so as to avoid a bit of confusion in the Finder. After rebooting I got the same error you mentioned in your post. I am going to try reverting back to the old names to see if that will work. Do you think renaming the Maciontsh HD drive names is what did it? Any other thoughts how to fix it?

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 20:35:00 +0000

By: Ryan Villanueva

Ryan Villanueva — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 15:25:00 +0000

Maybe an update changed it but my Documents folder points properly to my second hard disk.

By: Ryan Villanueva

Ryan Villanueva — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 15:25:00 +0000

Maybe an update changed it but my Documents folder points properly to my second hard disk.

By: iMex

iMex — Sun, 22 May 2011 17:44:00 +0000

For the people that needed to reverse the process.
In my case it was taking the Admin home folder in the separate HD to the System/Boot HD. I tried simple copy command but the folder in the destination drive (System/Boot HD) would have to be fussed with permissions, additionally and for a reason that I didn’t understand, I had issues copying the library folder in particular. What I did was running a back up client and backed up the home folder in interest (Admin folder in my case) to the destination drive (in my case to the Boot/System drive). I used Intego Personal Back up, enabling the ‘copy all files and permissions’ as well as enabling authenticating before backing up. At the end, it copied the folder to where I wanted to, changed the home folder location (per Chris’ explanation above), restarted the computer and it worked as expected. I see now the house icon for Admin in my Boot/System drive, all preferences kept as I had them before.
It was a mistake from my part moving the administrator home folder out of the boot/system drive. I’m running an eSata external drive from a Mac Mini, at some point the eSata cable did not make good connection to the external drive, and that caused me log in problems. Ensuring the cable made good connection to the external drive solved the problem but I wanted to make sure this did not happen again, at least when logging in as Administrator. Moving the folder back to the System/Boot drive will certainly take care of this.
Hope this helps.
iMex

PS: Other users home folders that I needed to move to a different drive, I
was able to do fine using Chris’ instructions above. -Thanks for the
detailed instructions Chris.

By: Chris Pirillo

Chris Pirillo — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:51:00 +0000

The rules may have changed since the release of Snow Leopard, and Lion may change the rules yet again. Stay tuned. :)