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Table of Contents   Page 1: Sizing and Setting Up Your Mac Boot Drive Page 2: Installing a Just-Right Mac System Page 3: Separate Data from System and Applications Page 4: High Performance Mac Configuration Page 5: Testing Mac Memory and Drives Page 6: Choosing the Right Mouse Page 7: Boot With the 64-bit Kernel Page 8: Set Finder Preferences Page 9: System Preferences (General) Page 10: How to Unhide your Library Folder on OS X Page 11: Set a Two-button Mouse Page 12: Keyboard Shortcuts Page 13: Disable the Caps Lock key Page 14: Declutter the Dock Page 15: Turn Off iTunesHelper Page 16: How to Exclude Items from Spotlight Search Page 17: Apple Mail Unread Mailbox Setup Page 18: Apple Mail VIP Feature: Multiple Emails for one Contact Page 19: Time Machine for Always-on Backup Page 20: Relocating the Home Directory Off the Boot Drive Page 21: Relocating Mail Off the Boot Drive Page 22: Relocating Documents Folder Off the Boot Drive Page 23: Relocating iTunes and iPhoto Libraries

Relocating the Home Directory Off the Boot Drive

This is an advanced technique. Don’t move your home directory casually or without well thought-out reasons! It is generally NOT recommended to move your home directory.

Most Macs make it expensive or impossible to have more than one fast drive, except perhaps for the 2010 iMac, which allows both a hard drive and an SSD. The Mac Pro makes it easy to have multiple, fast drives.

There are good reasons to leave your home directory in the default location:

• If the drive containing your home directory “goes away”, you won’t be able to login. Be sure to create another admin account that resides on the boot drive.
• If the Boot drive is a fast SSD, moving the home directory can be self-defeating for performance.
• The Documents folder can be moved, but it is an idiot mode anyway, which is useless for my needs. Store your stuff on a dedicated drive. The annoyance is programs that default to saving in the Documents folder. Train yourself to save where you want to.
• Both iTunes and iPhoto can keep their libraries wherever you like; this is built-in functionality.
• The Mail folder can be relocated.
• The Pictures folder can be relocated, but I advise never using it anyway (dedicate a separate volume for your data and images).

What’s left? Not much.

The Contacts and Calendar stuff (obscured in an LDAP database), preferences, various cruft and artifacts produced by applications.

Moving your home directory

Don’t email me for help. This is an advanced maneuver, you’re on your own!

Don’t even think about doing this without making a clone of your system first!

Go into System Preferences => Accounts, and select the account you’d like to move; click the lock to unlock.

Choose Advanced Options… by right-clicking or control-clicking on the account you want to relocate: Next, copy your home directory to the desired location, then change it using the Choose… button as shown below. Don’t mess with anything here unless you really know what you are doing.

Wrapup

Do not forget—

1. After making these changes, immediately reboot, then REMOVE your original home directory to avoid confusion.
2. Don’t forget to create another admin account that resides on the boot drive, so that you login if your regular account is on a volume that “goes away”.