Best location for home folders

setting up a new server - with about 150 home folders - and say a maximum of 30 concurrent users:
Does it help to distribute the home folders across 3 or 4 drives?
Will it be faster with external Thunderbolt drives?

Generally yes and yes.  The faster the drive(s) the better.  Try to predict load to distribute across storage or even servers.  Watch for hitting the IOPS wall on your storage if you are dealing with a lot of small files.  This has been trouble in a few locations.
But more important than the drive is your connection to the network.  Do the simple math.  Let's assume you have 1000Base connection and you are supporting wireless clients.  The wireless is N and you are able to get about 50Base a connection.  This is aggregated into your base stations and the base stations connect at 1000Base to the network.  You will likely have multiple points of access.  30 concurrent users are getting the full through put (beginning of session, saves, and end of session) would be 1500Base exceeding the capacity of your access point if all 30 are on the same station. 
Now consider the impact if these are wired devices.  The more bandwidth you give the server the more requests it can handle as log as the disk array can keep up.
Give your server the fastest network connection you can.  Consider bonding to get to 2000Base as that is inexpensive (assuming you have good switches already) and easy to implement.  10GigE is also available but if you don't have the switches already this can be pricey fast.
Be aware of folder redirection (there are some great resources in this forum on how to implement) and also understand the apps that will be used.  Not all apps are network home friendly.
Reid
Apple Consultants Network
Author "Yosemite Server – Foundation Services" :: Exclusively available in Apple's iBooks Store
Author "Mavericks Server – Foundation Services" :: Exclusively available in Apple's iBooks Store
Author "Mavericks Server – Control and Collaboration" :: Exclusively available in Apple's iBooks Store

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    Sorry but I have no idea what your problem is
    However it is cealr tha tyou do not understand how to use iPhoto
    what exactly do the following mean?
    - IPhoto has developed many picture icons that are no longer pointing to the photo they once were,
    If you click on a thumbnail and a different photo opens tehn Back up your iPhoto library, Depress and hold the option (alt) and command keys and launch iPhoto - rebuild your thumbnails - this may take seversl tries
    If you click on a thumbnail and you get a ! then Back up your iPhoto library, Depress and hold the option (alt) and command keys and launch iPhoto - rebuild your iPhoto library daabase - this will not work if you have moved or deleted those photos using the finder or cleanup or tidy up software
    In the preferences/advanced tab I have selected "Importing: Copy items to the Iphoto Library"
    Was it ever unchecked? that is stongly not recommended
    Understanding where photo files are located when brought into iPhoto. I have moved to importing all my photos via photostream, which I believe is supposed to download all photos into the iPhoto library, but appears to be downloading some into the downloads folder.
    Assuming that you have a default managed library then all photos are in your iPHoto library - any that are not were not done by iPhoto but you the user or other sofware
    So
    I believe it would be good to place all my image files in one location, that is visible to all applications and finder.
    By default and very strongly recommended all Photos in iPhoto are in the iPhoto library and are accessaboe to all other programs using the supported methods as described in the user tip on accessing your iPhoto files - https://discussions.apple.com/community/ilife/iphoto?view=documents
    However they are not accessable via the finer - Why? Because i{Photo replaces the finder for you photos and you NEVER access them using the finder - - this statement was one clue that you do not understand how iPhoto works and how to use it
    And this also indicates that you do not understand - this is NOT how you access photos - see above
    So for instance, if I need to find all the pictures of a car I want to sell on craigs list or attach them to an email, I can find them via a finder window without having to open and go through the iPhoto app. I had created many "Albums" to do this in iPhoto that had worked to achieve this.
    A location like ...username/pictures/iPhoto Library/master/2013/car pictures/front.jpg
    So you either need to learn how to use iPhoto or switch to a different product - iPhoto does not work like you want - with iPhoto you do not directly access your photos and you can not control or change where they are stored
    LN

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    Message Edited by Gambba on 03-26-2008 04:37 PM

    The WRT150N has no brdging capability and if your planning to use a 3rd party firmware it will void the warranty of the router. I believe your your only option here is to place the WRVS4400N in the lounge since other location is a dead spot.

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