How do I relocate /Users to an alternate hard disk?

I have an iMac with a small SSD drive where the Mac OSX and applications reside.  It also has a second hard drive which as supplied by Apple does not have anything on it.  I don't want to fill this up with user files (documents / photos / audio etc), so I want to know how to relocate the /users directory so that this resides on the Hard disk and not the OS Disk.  I think this needs to be done at the OS level so that things like backup automatically know that the data exists on the second drive, etc.   Thanks In advance.  PS I am new to Mac OSX.

Hi, many thanks for the link. I followed the instructions but when you get into the Snow Leopard disk utility, it only allows you to change where the complete OS installation resides, not the components of the OS.  For example with Linux / Unix you have a number of mount points (/users) being one of them and you can specify which drive that resides on.  I want to leave the main OS (and apps) on the fast but smaller SSD and put the \Users (user home folders etc, where all the downloads, music, pics, movies, etc) get put by default programs, on the second harddisk.  That way the SSD doesn't get cluttered up with non-essential stuff.
I could not find anything in the disk utility that allowed you to specify where the individual mount points reside, which is what I think is needed.

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