Placing files outside the home folder?

[Saturn1217]

Sorry for the possibly very dumb question.

I want to know if it is possible to put files at the root of my boot volume. Basically can I put files outside the home folder on my hard drive and not in any other predefined folders? Will things I place here have any weird permissions? Will this mess up my system in anyway?

I know that it is not recommended to put user files in this location but I just wanted to know if it was possible without horrible consequences.

My reasons for this (if anyone cares): I have 2 partitions on my hard drive. One for Lion and one for Snow Leopard. I currently have to stay on the Snow Leopard partition due to desperately needing some trial software for work that I can't close. I'm trying to free up space on my SL partition by moving files to the Lion partition without actually putting them in a user folder because I still want full read/write access to them in SL. But I don't want to mess up my Lion install and I won't be able to check and see if I messed it up until I'm allowed to reboot my computer again (which will be like two months from now).

I tried to search but I don't think many people have the same question (or at least according to google they didn't)

 

[r0k]

I would recommend making a "spare" folder on the other disk. Don't put stuff in /. You can make a folder called /moredata and give yourself permissions on it and put stuff there. I prefer not to ever put anything outside the home folder because I have crashplan backing up my home folder and I don't want to have to think about backing up other locations.

Disk 1 (boot disk)
Use your normal user folder

Disk 2 (spare disk - "other OS")
Use /moredata

hope this helps...

 

[Saturn1217]

Thanks for the help!

Just to make sure I'm clear I can, from within Snow Leopard, create a folder at the root of the Lion partition and then put files here. And I assume since I am creating the folder in SL I can set up permissions for this folder so it is accessible by my user account in SL?

Thanks again.

 

[Gregg2]

Files located where you describe should be accessible from any user account by default, I think.

 

[SookieSam]

To ensure files in /moredata on Lion volume are accessable whether booted from Snow Leopard or Lion, make /moredate folder read/write for everyone ... provided that security is not an issue.