Move home folder off start-up HD in High Sierra?

[Ojan]

I have a mid-2010 Mac Pro tower (not a macbook).  I'm a musician and photographer, and this computer has been good to me. 

 

I recently had a hard-drive failure and decided it would be a good time to optimize my system.  I looked into upgrading to an SSD, but read that although many have done so without issue, there can be problems, and furthermore the best way to optimize performance on my particular computer is by moving the home folder to a separate drive, https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4569978?start=0&tstart=0  (see expert Grant Bennet-Alder's contribution).  So I bought a 1TB SSHD (hybrid) for my startup/applications drive and a 6TB HDD for my home folder.  

 

Now, after moving my home folder, I am unable to delete the original home folder.  The pop-up window says Moving "" to "Trash", items to delete: 1, and stays stuck there.  Another symptom I noticed, which isn't a big deal but might be related, is when restarting, I get a message that says "you are unable to log-in to this user account at this time", at which point I simply click "shut down", then, start it back up without issue.  

 

I called a local mac repair shop and they told me that since High Sierra, it is no longer recommended to move the home folder; that it should stay on the start up disc.

 

What do you guys think?  And what should I do to optimize my set up here?  Thank you!

[allannyholm]

I would suggest using Symbolic links to your Home folder-folders instead.

 

I have one that I use when not using a home-made Fusion Drive like right now. If you do have your Documents-folder in iCloud then don't use the symlinks for that. If you want to have your folders to appear great in your StartupDisk's Users/yournamehere/ then take each folder and copy paste the icon on the folders in existence on the Macintosh HD (in my case).

 

Create all the needed folders on the Macintosh HD before you begin and create the Applications folder in the StartupDisk Users/yournamehere/ before making a symlink to it 

 

Replace all instances of 'yournamehere' with your own user folder name

Replace all instances of 'Macintosh\ HD/' with your own drive name. You can put the name of the drive in quotes like; "Macintosh HD" if you prefer that.

 

NOTE: Copy whatever you have in the folders to your other drive before removing them with the 'rm -rf'-command below.

 

Quote

sudo rm -rf ~/Movies/
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/yournamehere/Movies/ ~/Movies

sudo rm -rf ~/Music/
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/yournamehere/Music/ ~/Music

sudo rm -rf ~/Documents/
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/yournamehere/Documents/ ~/Documents

sudo rm -rf ~/Downloads/
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/yournamehere/Downloads/ ~/Downloads

sudo rm -rf ~/Pictures/
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/yournamehere/Pictures/ ~/Pictures

sudo rm -rf ~/Applications/
ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/yournamehere/Applications/ ~/Applications