Disconnecting the Home Folder

[frnak]

Quick question here. I have my only user home directory set to another hard drive while the OS lives on an SSD (It's not using fusion drive).


Hypothetically, if I were to disconnect the hard drive with the only home directory on it. What would happen to my computer? Would I be able to boot up? If so, what would I be logging into.



Let me know if anyone has attempted this. THanks!

 

[satcomer]

Yes OS X would choke with no User folder. Even Windows would choke with no User folder.

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestion:

DON'T move the home folder.

Instead, simply don't use it. Just keep your stuff in OTHER folders, named as you wish.

I've done this with my critical data for decades.
I keep my important files on a separate volume (partition) from my OS.
This keeps the "Main data" volume relatively small in size (vis-a-vis the "System" partition) and VERY easy to back up.

Some folks don't like seeing more than one drive or volume on their desktops.
I keep no less that -7- volumes mounted at all times.
And I know where things are supposed to go on each of them.

 

[benwiggy]

OS X would not choke. If the location of the user folder was not available, the OS would create a new set of folders in the default location. It would appear to be empty, with none of your settings or files.
This is what happens when people rename their user folder incorrectly.

I concur with Fishrrman: keep the user account on the SSD. There are some things that will benefit from the speed of the SSD: caches, email files, etc. Your preferences will therefore be on the SSD in your user's Library folder.

However, the bulk of your data: music, documents, videos, whatever, can easily be kept on another volume without any "tinkering" of the system.