Why does my home directory location keep reverting to the previous setting?

Question

I have two hard drives in my MacBook Pro: one is a solid state drive that holds the OS and Applications, the other a spinning platter drive that holds my home directory.

I currently have /Users/ian as a symlink to /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/ian.

And in my user profile my home directory is /Users/ian:

When I change the Home directory field to /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/ian and perform the requested restart of my machine, after I log back in, my home directory is set back to /Users/ian.

Why won't my changes to this setting stick?

Answer 1

I suspect the problem was me trying to change my home directory from my account. I was able to make it work by:

1. Creating a new user on the system
2. Giving that new user Administrator privileges
3. Logging out of my account
4. Logging in to the new user account
5. Editing my account's home directory from the new account

After that was done the changes stuck and my home directory is now on my HD instead of SSD. I kept the other account around for now, though I stripped it of Adminstrator privileges.