You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Using an external SSD for my home folder fails with OS upgrades

At the beginning of 2021, I purchased a new iMac with an internal SSD that had insufficient capacity for all my files. I connected a 2TB SSD and created a new home structure with all my folders and files, changing the home folder location in Users & Groups to reflect the change. Restarting the iMac resulted in the successful login and that continued throughout 2021, including the upgrade to Monterey from Big Sur. In recent months, however, every upgrade has resulted in the OS constructing a new 'Volume' with the name of the external SSD and creating the home folder there; the actual SSD's mount point is changed so that its name appears with " 1" appended. Until now, I have been able to remove the additional creation and revert to my correct setup ... but not with Ventura.


Help!!

iMac 27″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Oct 27, 2022 8:24 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 27, 2022 9:26 AM

This has been a known issue since the macOS 12.5.1 update broke systems which have their home user folder on an external drive. See this thread for details and a possible fix:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254143123


Similar questions

2 replies

Oct 27, 2022 1:30 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you for the swift reply. I checked out the link you gave (why it didn't come up when I searched, I don't know!!) and now understand a little more of the problem. I shall leave things as they are and use the workaround suggested in a post in the linked thread (separate (normal) administrator account to manage after upgrades).

Using an external SSD for my home folder fails with OS upgrades

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.