How do I move users' home folders to another disk other than boot disk

I would like to move all of my various users' home folders to a different disk. How is this done?
Do I need to then have the disk mount before any users log in? If so, how do I mount it?

But if you are using Leopard (since you are posting in the Leopard category) and simply forgot to update your profile, you can select the location of your home directory by going to System Preferences Accounts pane, and right (control) clicking on your user name to get the +Advanced Options+. You may need to +unlock the lock+ (give authorization) first.
Here are more specific directions.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071025220746340

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System folders on another drive other than boot drive

hi, guys...
does anyone know anything about moving your folders such as "documents, photos, movies, music" to an external drive or separate partition in snow leopard? or how this might affect Lion?
i've found some online documentation that shows you can move your entire home folder (which i don't want to do), and some documentation that you can use symbolic links (via a few terminal commands) so that the actual system folder can be moved elsewhere with an alias being the actual reference folder.
the reason i want to do this is to move my music and photo folders to a storage partition. i add and delete so often on these that it ends up fragmenting my drive and bogs down my startup disk. also, i'm going to move soon to an SSD as my startup drive, either 128 or 240 gb and use it only for system files and move all my data elsewhere.
but as you know, os x likes certain things in the default folders.
so i guess i'm looking for anyone's thoughts on this.
oh, and i do have a question. if i can use a symbolic link and have the actual data reside elsewhere, if i do a time machine backup and it's backing up all my system and user folders, will it backup the data that resides elsewhere, or would i have to actually back up separately from the other location where the music and photos reside?
is this making any sense to anyone?

makes a lot of sense. I am looking for an answer myself. My documents folder long ago outgrew it's place on the boot drive. It would be nice to keep it in the user folder organized on another disc

How to manage local user home folders?

We are using Mac OS X 10.6.8 in a classroom. Hard drive has two partitions, one for OS and apps, the other for student's files. Computers are bind to the Active Directory. Unfortunately, local home folders are on the boot parition. Over a time when apps FCP and Avid are frequently used, the boot partition gets filled with files and finally it's full. With zero kb available, users cannot even login anymore. Manually deleting files by admin is cumbersome and time-consuming task.
I'm looking for a way to keep /Users folder clean. Putting user's home folders to server is not an option, because of latency issues etc. Unfortunately the local home folder is the default saving place when user issues the Save As command. I've tried to tinker with the User Template to lock the Documents folder but apps like Microsoft Word and Final Cut Pro go crazy when they cannot save there.
Forwarding /Users to other partition does not solve the problem, it just moves the problem to another place.
Logout Hook to automatically purging the files could be an solution, but there's always one hapless soul who saves his or hers files to wrong place and loses them. Or maybe a script which looks at the modfication date and deletes old files.
Any ideas?

You need to set the scratch disks in FCP and Avid to fix the problem.
Files coming from word etc, will be so minor that it'll take forever to fill up the HD with that kind of stuff.
If you wanted to move the whole home folder to another place on the system, you need to do so using OS X server. It's called Augmenting Active Directory User Records.
If you don't have an OS X Server, you may be able to change the Users Home directory on each individual computer, but it's going to be pretty cumbersome. Do so in the Accounts pane in the System Preferences.
Once you've changed the User Home folder location, you need to copy the users home folder using rsync in the terminal.
Like this:
rsync -av /Users/*username* /Volumes/*drivename*/*homefolderlocation*/
HTH
-Graham

How do I move my home directory to another disk?

I want to find out the "standard procedure" for moving my home directory to another disk. My current system disk is getting quite full, so I have purchased additional storage. The issues I am concerned about are the following:
Preserving the file permissions
I have used rsync and ditto commands to copy the file. Does rsync preserve the permissions like the ditto command?
Updating the System to use the new home directory
I have used the Ctl-Click on the accounts control panel to update the location of the home directories. Do applications use "~<username>" or /Users/<username> to find the home directory of the user (obviously this is limited to Apple Controlled software).
Understanding the /Users and /home directories
Since Apple is no longer using netinfo, I wanted to get a better understanding how these directories are set up. Is the /home directory exclusively for network mounted home directories.
Please let me know if you have any questions.

I disagree with Linc Davis on whether to move the home folder, But I think you are going about it the wrong way.
Having a Boot drive with only System, Library, Applications, and the hidden unix directories including Paging/Swap on it is one of the best ways to speed up routine disk Access for all your other files. The system keeps "snacking" away loading and reloading bits and pieces of System and Applications as you work, and that System activity slows "regular" disk access way down by moving the drive heads away from the files you are processing.
Giving System files their own drive speeds up everything.
Here are two good recipes and discussions about how and why to do this, and how to make it happen without a single line of Terminal code:
http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/
http://jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/Blog/00E03B83-1ADA-406E-A940-396D39F598E A.html

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Or is there a way we can move the member by any other means other than manually moving it?
because I would like to schedule this process.
Thanks,

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* https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nosquint/
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How can I move my web page to a site other than .Mac?

I've been using iWeb to create my school's website and I would like to expand it and move it to a different host under my new domain name. iWeb doesn't have an FTP client, so what options do I have? Can I somehow make iWeb direct my page to my new domain for uploading or would it be easier to start from scratch with some different software. I really like iWeb's flexibilty in creating just what I want. Any advice would be greatly apprecited.
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

check here 2:
http://karreth.com/iweb/Host%20To%20Other%20Than%20.Mac.html
max

Can't add users' home folders to Windows Libraries - "unindexed network location" error

I am unable to add our users' home folders to their Windows Libraries on client PCs. Windows is giving an unindexed network location error.
This worked perfectly fine in WHS 2011, but is failing on WSE 2012 R2 Essentials.
I've checked the indexing settings on the server, and the correct locations are in fact being indexed.
Since several of our clients have limited local storage, I can't solve this by turning on Offline Files.
Is this behavior by design, or am I seeing a bug?
I'm guessing that on WHS 2011 the user folders are special-cased somehow, as normally one would need to include the share root in a library for federated indexing to work correctly. What is it about WHS 2011 that makes this work, and is it possible
to replicate these settings on our WSE 2012 R2 server?
Thank you.

No, our clients are not domain joined.
To clarify, I'm not trying to redirect local folders, but rather to add the (automatically provisioned) user folder on the server to local libraries. Federated search does support this scenario in WHS, so I assume it should work in WSE.
Trying to understand why I'm seeing the error. Thanks.

Users home folders not accessible on SMB, OS X 10.6.4

Hello,
I'm facing this very weird problem upon trying to connect my Windows XP SP3 clients to their respective home folders on Mac OS X Server 10.6.4.
The other shares and public folders however work just fine.
So, upon connecting to the home folder of the user from Windows, (on \\serverIP\username\ ) I keep getting the authentication login form as if I'm typing the wrong username or password.
Of course the user's password is correct.
Oddly enough I can connect and see all the users shares if I go on My Computer and type \\serverIP\ and then enter username and password. I can access the "Users" share and even see other users documents and files!
It used to work very well before a server restart last night, I decided to update to 10.6.4 to see if the problem would go away but no luck.
In the SMB service log I see the following everytime I try to connect directly to the users home folders:
[2010/06/23 14:29:14, 0, pid=2834] /SourceCache/samba/samba-235.4/samba/source/smbd/service.c:makeconnectionsnum(1047)
'/Network/Servers/macmini-server.solinf.org/Users/silvia' does not exist or permission denied when connecting to [silvia] Error was Host is down
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HI,
If you have ClickToFlash installed, that could be a factor.
Also, follow the instructions here to clear the Flash cache.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11672709&#11672709
Carolyn

10.6 server on w2k AD domain, trouble making new user home folders

i recently starting working as a public school which has over 800 macs, both intel and ppc, laptops and desktops. there are also 300 windows machines as well. my job is to create the new user accounts for the students and staff as well as perform routine maintenance on the computers/servers. there are 3 xserves (intel) running 10.6.8 and 3 windows boxes running 2000 server. (i know thats old but it was top of the line when the building was build in 2002) the windows machines perform the user authentication via active directory and the xserves house the home folders stored on an xserve raid. the problem i am having it that i cannot create the new home folders for the incoming students on the xserve. the accounts are created in AD with no problems, and everything points to where it should be. however, when i try to manually create them (either by createhomedir in terminal, or by a script one of the previous system admins made) nothing happens. both active directory and open directory are up and running and all the servers seem to be talking to each other. on a side note, if i deleted an existing home folder and than ran the terminal command, it creates it perfectly. in one last attempt i re-bound all the mac servers to the AD and now it wont even let me re-create an existing home folder. anyone have any thoughts or ideas?? i have about a month left to get this fixed and all the computers imaged with the new config. i'd rather not have to re-build the AD domain but if it comes down to it, i may not have any choice.

sorry i havent posted back sooner. i tried server cleanup and it did seem to fix other minor issues with the server, and it mapped the correct path to the user home folders. but it won't let me fix the permissions. when a student logs in to a client machine their home folder window opens up and all the folders are there but it won't let you open them stating that "you do not have the correct permissions" i ran fix permissions in server cleanup a few times, but it didnt fix the situation. also, i noticed that when i tell SC to look at the active directory domain, i get an error window and it stops loading users after the C's (alphabetical by last name) could this be because the AD domain is windows 2000 server? i just got 2 win2003 server machines freed up that i could migrate the AD domain to. that might fix some issues.

How can I move my /library folder to another drive?

I'll try and keep this as brief as possible. (tl;dr version: My library folder is on the wrong drive. How can I move it?)
About 18 months ago I switched the HDD in my mid 2009 MBP for an SSD and replaced the optical drive with a larger HDD for storage, which I then moved my home folder onto (though of course not the library folder).
This weekend the HDD got corrupted and I had to do a full erase/restore through time machine, and until I had reformatted the HDD I could not even log in. Once I had erased it I could log in again, but although the old library folder still exists on the boot SSD, it has replaced the (of course now missing until my TM restore is complete) home folder with a new one on the HDD and set up a new default library folder.
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I know moving the library is a bit of a minefield, so I'm hoping one of you can help!

You should leave the Library folder that is at top-level on the Boot drive right where it is.
The ~/Library (in your user_Id) folder should be moved off the Boot drive with the rest of your User files if you choose to move the Home folders.
What are you talking about?

How can I move mail from Gmail to another account?

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I think my best recourse is to switch to an email service provider that conforms to the IMAP standard (which Gmail does not). Assuming I find one, I will have both accounts, Gmail and the new one, in Mail.app. How can I move the mail from Gmail to the other account?
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Mail.app in Mavericks is incompatible with Gmail. I use Gmail. I have about 2GB of mail, most of it in a few dozen archive folders, stored on Gmail, and (I think) duplicated locally on my Mac Mini.
--> mine's working fine. I know there are issues, but it should work
I think my best recourse is to switch to an email service provider that conforms to the IMAP standard (which Gmail does not).
--> yes, it would be nice if they adhered to standards. That said, mine works great. So far.
Assuming I find one, I will have both accounts, Gmail and the new one, in Mail.app. How can I move the mail from Gmail to the other account?
--> If all you want to do is keep your history, make a local folder on your mac and drag all the mail messages there (both se4nt and incoming). I am not sure what will happen if you later drag those into the new Xmail account
When all folders are empty, including the Inbox, can I be sure that every message has been moved to the new account, even though every message is still in the All Mail folder?
--> Dont look in "all mail". Open your inbox and look at each individual inbox.
Good luck,. But first, try to fix your account.
Grant

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How do I move users' home folders to another disk other than boot disk

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