User Accounts on an external drive - is this possible

I am planning to purchase a Mac Mini (with a 60 gig drive) for our household. There will be multiple user accounts set up, and I would like to have the user accounts on an external 500 gig LaCie drive (to allow for separate, potentially large iTunes and iPhoto libraries).
Is it possible to have the user accounts on an external drive, perhaps with shortcuts on the startup volume, if necessary? I will have my administrator account on the startup volume. My hope is that as people log in or use account switching, the Mini would look to the LaCie drive for the user's documents, media, etc. The intent is to perserve as much space on the startup disk as possible.

Log in from each account and then copy that account's home folder to the external drive. Once all of the home folders have been copied, open the NetInfo Manager in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and change the home property for each of the accounts you created on the system to point to the external drive; this will look like /Volumes/volumename/Users/username/. After all of the home folders have been moved, create a new administrator account in the Accounts pane of System Preferences for troubleshooting purposes, and then verify that everything works properly from each of the other accounts. Don't delete or alter any accounts which you didn't create or don't recognize.
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