Mac question, is this possible?

[Feek]

With the potential sale of my PC along with a nice tax rebate that I'm due and the hoarding of some expenses (plus discovering the HE store) I've decided that I do still rather like OS X and I'm looking at getting myself a Mac Pro in the next couple of months.

So I want to know if my plan is possible.

I want to have the Apple supplied 320Gb drive for the OS and applications but have a second and faster drive configured for my home directory.

So effectively I guess that I want to mount a second drive as /Users/feek and not to show up in the finder as a second drive, but have that as a transparent mount point. I've got used to having just one icon on the desktop and would like to keep it that way!

Can this be done? Is this a good thing to do?

[Burble]

You can have your home directory on a seperate drive, that's easy - just copy the home directory over to the other drive, rename the original directory then create a symlink to point to the new location. Assuming that all works you can then delete the renamed original directory. Something like this should work:

cd /
ditto /Users/Feek /Volumes/NewDrive/
mv /Users/Feek /Users/Feek.original
ln -s /Volumes/NewDrive /Users/Feek

You'll either need to be root or use sudo.

As for having it as a transparent mount point - no idea!

To be honest, I don't really see the point in doing it. The I/O intensive stuff isn't gonna be in /Users anyway so I don't see the benefit of having your home directory on a faster drive.

[Feek]

Space largely.

My current single drive has just under 300Gb on it and the stock supplied drive is 320Gb so I'd like to keep user files away from that boot drive. Also the fact that all drives run on separate channels on the motherboard so that should give a slight jag of a speed boost as well with near simultaneous access (this may be rubbish).

Also because I have a quantity of drives that I can use!

I've found an option in user preferences that tells where the users home drive is so I reckon the best way to do it is to install and patch the OS and then before doing anything else to copy the home directory over to the other drive and then tell the OS where it is. Providing all permissions are good then it should 'just work'.

The transparent mount thing may not be as desirable as I originally pondered. I shall have to think further about that.

[Mark]

Should work fine. Moving user files around should (if Apple have done their job right) be safe - it's moving system files around that can cause the next system update you do to nuke your system.

[LeperousDust]

http://lifehacker.com/399983/remove-your-macs-hard-drive-from-the-desktop

That what you're after Feek?

[Feek]

Nope, that removes all drives from the desktop.

Thinking about it, I don't mind a second icon on there, especially as it will point straight to my home directory.