No longer can point home directory to external drive

I am having a problem where my Mac stopped using the correct users' home directories on an external Firewire drive. It insists on using home directories on the main disk.
First some background: I have two drives. "Drive 1" is inside my Mac Mini and has the operating system on it. "Drive 2" is an external Firewire drive and contains all users' home directories. Some months ago, I moved all the home directories to the external drive using steps similar to what's described on this page. Everything was fine for several months:
http://maczealots.com/articles/home/
My troubles began this week when I unmounted Drive 2 as part of during some troubleshooting I was doing to get an external device to mount. I solved that problem, but since re-connecting Drive 2, it insists on using a home directory on Drive 1 in this location:
/Drive 1/Volumes/Drive 2/Users/user
("Volumes" is a hidden directory.)
The location I want it to use is this (and indeed, this is what is set in the NetInfo Manager):
/Volumes/Drive 2/Users/user
I also noticed in Disk Utility that the mount point for Disk 2 is "/Volumes/Disk 2 1" When it should be "/Volumes/Disk 2" That is, there's an extra "1" at the end of the name. I read else where that the mount point can get messed up when the computer tries to a unmounted disk.
I have already used Disk Utility to repair permissions on Drive 1 (Disk 2) has "ignore permissions" enabled) and to run a "Repair Disk."
mac mini duo-core (intel) Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Yes.
You must format your external drive as Mac OS Extended (journaled).
You can select this drive on the iMovie import screen.
For events already in your Event Library, you must move them from within iMovie. Click VIEW/EVENTS BY DISK and command-drag to the external disk icon in the Event Library List.

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Hi - I'm not sure what happened here, and I'm hoping someone can help. Basically, we are starting to film library programs for local TV. A colleague at the high school with a lot of experience was kind enough to buy us a mybook external drive (one terabyte!) to store our video and audio files. We use an iMac and two eMacs for the teen digital film club and have also just been given a white macbook specifically for production. So -
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Last edited by jskier (2010-06-02 00:48:49)

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Filevault Encryption for Moved Home Directory and External Hard Drive

This posting consists of two different, yet associated, questions.
Here is my relevant equipment:
MacBook Pro
Micronet Platinum RAID Pro, 2.5 terabytes (uses: video editing, backup)
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*Question 1:*
I currently use FileVault to encrypt my Home directory on my MacBook Pro. However, I am running out of hard drive space, given that I do a lot of work with film and have a lot of large applications such as Final Cut Studio 2 and Creative Suite 3 Master Collection fully installed and taking up a lot of space.
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In the past, FileVault would not encrypt data on external hard drives—only data within a Home directory.
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Thanks.

More information.
Home Folder - Move

Home Directory on External Disk has stopped being mounted as Home Director

Title says it all....
Set up external RAID mirror to be used as Home Directory for User "David". The Home Directory used to mount as Home drive but doesn't anymore. When I turn on I need to first login with root user then:
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2. Open Terminal:
cd /Volumes
rm -rf David (this deletes /Volumes/David which is created on startup disk)
3. Re-mount RAID mirror
4. Log out and Login as David
If I do not take this action when I want to login a freshly created /Volumes/David is created on the startup drive.
Advice on resolving please

I have already checked the RAID volume and it looks healthy.
I have had a look in the system.log and the following appears to be relevant to the problem however I would not know how to make a full diagnosis and resolve:
Dec 22 00:34:56 kutching SystemStarter[44]: The following StartupItems failed to start properly:
Dec 22 00:34:56 kutching SystemStarter[44]: /Library/StartupItems/tap
Dec 22 00:34:56 kutching SystemStarter[44]: - execution of Startup script failed
Dec 22 00:34:56 kutching SystemStarter[44]: /Library/StartupItems/tun
Dec 22 00:34:56 kutching SystemStarter[44]: - execution of Startup script failed
Dec 22 00:34:56 kutching system_profiler[205]: CFPreferences: user home directory at file://localhost/Volumes/David/ is unavailable. User domains will be volatile.
Going to try what is suggested here:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7175&start=0
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I want to search an external hard drive but when I click on it and do a command F the darn highlight jumps right back to 'home computer'. How can I search the actual external drive?

This is extremely irritating and frustrating. I think someone said to click on the external drive's name and do a command F but that doesn't work.
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YAY! That did it.
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Move /User directory to external drive

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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!).
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This is an important warning for anyone who moves a home directory, no matter what method is used - thanks very much!

Can't install OSX on external drive...

Hi ----------------------------
A couple of days ago I purchased a Seagate 300gig Firewire/USB drive. I partioned it with Disk Utility and proceeded to install OS 10.4 from the install DVD. No dice. It wouldn't let me get past the window where you indicated a disk/volume on which to install. Phoned Seagate support. They said I couldn't install a system on an external drive. That sounded strange to me as I have a ACOM 60gig external on which I had no problem installing OS 10.2.8.
Anyhow, I then turned to Carbon Copy Cloner and proceeded to try that. after clicking "Make Bootable" on the CCC preference page, I then proceeded to try to make a clone of my system. I failed twice, but the third time was a charm. When I fired up the Startup Disk in System Preferences, there was an icon for my new drive partition staring me right in the face. I choose it as the new startup disk, clicked on it, and my computer started it restart routine.
But, a flashing icon appeared on the screen, alternating between a question mark and a folder icon, and then the computer restarted up in its original disk/volume.
Hey, what gives? What am I doing wrong? I thought when I saw the new system icon in the Startup Disk window, that I was home free. If I'm unable to get a start up system on my new drive, it will become (just like the birdie in Monty Python) and "ex-new drive." It will go right back to Comp USA.
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FWIW, the 'zero out' option is a waste of time for problems like this. Please understand that even a one volume partitioning scheme puts more than one partition on the drive. Partition number zero contains information about the scheme & the other partitions. (This is the partition Disk Utility's "Info" button reports info about when you select the drive rather than one of its volumes. That should say it is ApplePartitionScheme for a PPC Mac, or a GUID one for an Intel one; otherwise the drive won't boot the Mac in question no matter what else you do.)
This partition is not affected by an erase with zeros option, which only applies to a mountable volume & only overwrites data on that volume with zeros. Aside from the intended use as a security option, the only other value it has is to pre-mark bad blocks on the drive used for storing that volume's data. But since it doesn't affect the other partitions, since the drive already maps out bad blocks wherever it finds them at write time, & since a misread zero is as bad as a misread one wherever it might occur in the partition info, there is just no way the zeros option is going to correct a boot problem.
So, if you want to do something useful, forget this advice to 'zero the drive' & the "Erase" tab in Disk Utility as a means of formatting the drive. You can only format volumes with that tab. To reformat the entire drive, or to check that its partition scheme is the right one for booting your Mac, use the "Partition" tab & its "Options" button.
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No longer can point home directory to external drive

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