Install new OS, but use existing User folders

I'm going to buy a SSD for my Mac Pro. I would like to install a fresh OS on that drive, but use the existing User folders on my HD.
I assume there's an easy way to do this, but I *suspect* that the install will make default User folders and accounts?
Any advice?

Maury Markowitz wrote:
I'm going to buy a SSD for my Mac Pro. I would like to install a fresh OS on that drive, but use the existing User folders on my HD.
I assume there's an easy way to do this, but I *suspect* that the install will make default User folders and accounts?
Any advice?
If you are the only user of your system you may be able to do this fairly easily. If there is more than one account it still may be be possible but there's a potential "gotcha".
If you intend to keep your home dir on a separate drive from your boot ssd, depending on how many of your own apps and data you intend to put on the ssd for faster access you really only need a 60GB to 120GB ssd. Assume the OS itself will need up to about 25GB of that ssd.
Assuming your are the only user then install the new OS on the ssd and create an account with the same account name of the one you had for the original system. Once that is up and running you can use the standard procedures to move an account to another drive. In other words use the Account system preferences to modify the account (account's Advanced Options) home dir info to point to your old home dir on the other drive. In this case you don't have any current home dir to actually move since you intend to use your old one on your other drive. Now reboot. Hopefully your reboot will come up using your old home dir.
The "gotcha" here is the userid. If you are the only user it should remain 501. So doing what I suggest above hopefully will work -- "hopefully" in that it has to be assumed your old account also had userid 501. With more than one account, if your old account wasn't 501 then I think you are in for ownership problems.
If you try this don't even attempt this without full backups of your original home disk(s). Best you create a bootable backup of your newly created ssd too so you don't have to reinstall and you can revert it from the backup if something goes wrong. Doing it this way doesn't write to new ssd cells if you don't have to (I am always concerend about this with ssd's even with possible TRIM or garbage collection).

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Install new OS, but use existing User folders

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