Move /User directory to external drive

I am trying to move my non-admin user directories over to a firewire-connected external drive because my my main drive is full.
I am able to copy the directory easily enough, and redefine the user path using the Preferences panel, but I cannot get permissions working on the drive. I have tinkered with the "Ignore owners" setting, but that doesn't do anything. Disk Utility keeps reporting "Owners Enabled: No".
I want the same file permissions and security as I had before. i.e. each user account is protected from each other.

Hi and welcome to Discussions-
mac mini, ibook g3, ibook g4, imac Mac OS X (10.5.5)
i moved a users home to a usb drive recently, i did it by going to sysprefs->users->right click username, advanced options and in there, browse to new location.
You are running Leopard and the above method works there, but it doesn't work in Tiger (this is the Tiger forum!).
one word of warning - i did this for my only admin user, all worked fine, then the mac lost power for some reason (never mind why), which meant that the mount point /Volumes/USB was left there, so when it rebooted it mounted my USB on /Volumes/USB-1 which meant it couldn't find my only users home dir, which meant i couldn't log in to fix it. so make sure you have an admin user on the system that uses a local disk (internal) so you can always log in and correct.
This is an important warning for anyone who moves a home directory, no matter what method is used - thanks very much!

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