OSX External Drive (Re)Naming Issue

[stereo247]

Hi All

My first posting here but I'm always trawling this great forum for answers. I'm in a bit if a pickle and hope someone can help.

I have been unable to relocate my User folder to my external thunderbolt drive. I think the problem comes from OSX assigning a "1" prefix to the external drive. When I view the drive name in Disk Utility or Finder the Drive name is "Thunderbay" as I named it. Yet when I'm attempting to relocate my User's Home Folder to the external drive (in System Prefs > Users > Advanced Options) the drive comes up as "Thunderbay 1".

To give you an idea of my setup:
A 5k iMac with the external drive the OWC Thunderbay Mini Raid edition with Softraid 5 managing the external disks. The 4 disks are arranged in two sets of striped (Raid 0).

Solutions I've tried:
I've had the problem on Yosemite and El Capitan.
With the old (Yosemite) Softraid 5 driver and the updated Beta (El Capitan) driver the problem persist.
Reformatting/managing the the drive with Disk Utility instead of Softraid 5 yields no change to the prefix.
Moving the user folder with Carbon Copy Cloner.
Trying all of the above from my own user account and a new admin account.

OWC's "tech support" last email suggested renaming the drive which I'll try tonight but don't really see the practical application being of benefit.

Any other insights or suggestions into my challenge?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I have been unable to relocate my User folder to my external thunderbolt drive."

My advice is that YOU DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO THIS, unless you absolutely know what you are doing.
The fact that you are coming here for help is an indication that you aren't sure of what your doing.

The "user folder(s)" in your account are MORE THAN "just folders".

I believe they are what are known as "symbolic links" and moving them around requires some special expertise and considerations.

Just wondering --- WHY do you want to move the user/home folders?

 

[stereo247]

Hi Fishrrman

My wife has lots of photo's and video (about 750GB) and with bootcamp on the internal things get a bit tight on the space side. I got the external drive as an upgrade to another external thunderbolt HD which housed my previous User folder without a similar issue.

i concur that moving the home folder initially is daunting and had to do lots of reading up on doing this before. Any ideas as to why OSX would change the drive naming as indicated?

 

[MacUser2525]

Hi Fishrrman

My wife has lots of photo's and video (about 750GB) and with bootcamp on the internal things get a bit tight on the space side. I got the external drive as an upgrade to another external thunderbolt HD which housed my previous User folder without a similar issue.

i concur that moving the home folder initially is daunting and had to do lots of reading up on doing this before. Any ideas as to why OSX would change the drive naming as indicated?

I will go with you having named the previous drive the same as the new and when OSX sees this it thinks there are two identically named drives so does the 1 extensions for its own use to tell them apart. OWC was correct name the new drive differently to get by that problem or since it appears you want the external storage to seemingly show up as your internal user folder I would think for easy access to its storage folders structure go with some symbolic links that shows the external drives folders as being part of your user directories. For example a folder on the TB external linked to either the Pictures directory itself or a Pictures/External_Drive_Directory sub-folder. This way you get easy access to the external drive from a save dialog without having the entire user folder present on the drive. Repeat the linking for each folder/sub-folder you want in the user directory on the external and you have done what is needed for the easier access. Of course all this linking can be avoided if the wife will just get used to the idea that the storage is now on the external and stop saving to the internal drive. If you want quick access to the external from a save dialog without the links take a look at Default Folder X it allows you to set directories as a quick link from a save dialog to save you from having to navigate thru the save dialog to the folder wanted for storage.

 

[stereo247]

I will go with you having named the previous drive the same as the new and when OSX sees this it thinks there are two identically named drives so does the 1 extensions for its own use to tell them apart.

Started off with a clean drive but thought I'd give the drive a new name and it worked. Thanks for insisting Macuser - everyhting up and running now.