Change the name of an internal HDD

Question

I have a 2011 iMac running High Seirra. I have an SSD with the OS installed and a separate HDD where I've put my Home Folder. Imaginatively named High Sierra HDD and High Sierra SSD.

I'm trying to install a command-line program called FastLane but I think it get caught up because of the spaces in the name of the drive. When I change the name of the HDD to High-Sierra-HDD or something similar I can no longer log into my main Admin account, I get the error:

You are unable to log in to the user account "Blahblah" at this time.

Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred.

I can log into my other admin account just fine, change the name back and sign in.

My question is, how do I safely change the name of internal drives without breaking my account?

And why would changing the drive name only affect the first admin account and not the second?

Cheers

Answer 1

I eventually found my own answer.

The error is caused because the the account is looking in the wrong place for the home directory. If you change the name of the internal drive which contains your accounts Home Directory you must also update the pointer to the Home Directory. You can do this by going to

1. System Preferences -> Users & Groups
2. Right-click your Username and select Advanced Options
3. Change the value next to Home Directory to match your new location.

In my case I changed:

/Volumes/High Sierra HDD/<Username> to /Volumes/HighSierraHDD/<Username>

Apple provides instructions of how to do this, as well as other changes you can make to your account, here.

Be warned because I have my OS installed on one drive and my home drive on the other you may get different results when you change yours.