In a situation where the desired location of an account's home folder is outside of /Users/ or have a name other than the default, it can be moved or renamed safely in the following ways:
- Using a tool such as ChangeShortName to change the short name of that account. This method cannot be used to move the home folder to a different drive.
- Move, rename, or copy the home folder in the Finder and then open the NetInfo Manager in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. In the list of properties for that account, find the home property and change that; if the home folder is being moved to another disk or partition, the desired value of the property will look like /Volumes/volumename/Users/username, where volumename is the name of the disk which contains the home folder. Log out and back in.
- Rename the home folder in the Finder, copying it to another disk if desired, and then use a tool such as SymbolicLinker to create a symbolic link to the actual location of the home folder in the place the computer looks for the home folder.
It is best to keep at least one account with its home folder on the startup disk, as some applications may not work properly if the home folder has been moved, and doing so may help if issues are encountered later.
