Can't move home folder to encrypted external drive

[adjuster]

I have a MacBook Pro with an SSD and a harddrive. Have the system and applications on the SSD. Want to move the home folder to the larger hard drive to store important files. I have done this several times with Leopard and Snow Leopard.

When I tried to do this in Lion, the system will not reboot and gives me an error message that is obtuse and not helpful at all.

I called Apple support and confirmed that this is a bug that engineering needs to fix or provide a work around. The helpful support person talked me through resetting passwords and let me reopen the computer.

So I left the home folder on the SSD and just moved my Dropbox files on the hard drive. Now, when the computer boots up, it asks for the password for the hard drive. No problem. But Dropbox thinks I have move the Dropbox folder and I have to go through a multistep process to reconfigure Dropbox.

Thought you should know. I hope to get an answer from Apple early next week.

 

[adjuster]

Apple engineers confirmed that you cannot move the home folder to an external encrypted drive. This is really dumb. You could do it in Leopard easily and without problems.

This is a nonstarter for Lion in my opinion.

 

[ckoerner]

I don't know if this is helpful, but check out this discussion on how to move the user directory to a secondary internal drive.