Moving Home Folder doesn't work properly

Schlingel wrote:

I tried first booting into my default user, changing the home root, and rebooting, next I rolled back from the secondary, internal admin, rebooted, logged back into into the secondary admin and changed the home root from there.

No. That's not what I'm talking about.

First of all, don't use a word like "default user". I don't know what you're talking about there. This sounds like a description of how you originally setup the external user. And to be honest, it sounds like you did it wrong. Maybe that's the problem?

Here is what you need. Deviate at your peril.

1. A functional, absolutely factory-fresh Macintosh computer. Wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS if you have to.
2. An administrator user having a home directory on the internal hard drive.
3. Using the administrator user, create a new user for the external hard drive.
4. Log in to the external user once. Then logout completely.
5. Using the administrator user, copy the external user home directory from the internal drive to the external. Make sure to retain correct ownership using the appropriate "cp" or "ditto" flags.
6. Using the administrator user, use System Settings to change the home directory of the external user to the external drive.
7. Cross your fingers and log in as the external user

I don't care what anyone on the internet says, I don't care what you read on Apple support documents, I don't care what any Apple employee tells you to you face - Apple does not support this. Your chances of failure, problems now or in the future, and/or data loss is 100%. But hey, maybe you get lucky!

Once you have it working, assuming it does ever work, then if you need to restart the computer, then you would be well-advised to login using the internal admin user first. This would make sure the external is properly mounted before your external user accesses it. Then login as the external. I'm only telling you this in hopes that it will be more reliable. By that I mean a longer delay until you experience unrecoverable data loss. Enjoy!

Schlingel wrote:

Any Ideas why this should not work on Sequoia?

Make sure the external drive is formatted as APFS. Make sure ownership is enabled.

I strongly recommend keeping an administrator user on the internal and only boot with that admin user. Then, after startup, switch to your external user.

Schlingel wrote:

This is exactly what I did. The external Drive is APFS formatted, Ownership is enabled. Just retried. Same issue. :/

Exactly? You also boot with an admin user hosted internally and then login to your external account?

I'm not saying that will work, that's just my best guess. Had you asked before trying it, or before buying the M4 Mini with a small SSD, I would have told you flat-out that Apple doesn't support that anymore. But generally people get angry when I tell them that and call me a liar. What do I know?

Schlingel wrote:

I don't appreciate the tone tough.

Maybe you should redirect your anger towards those social media influencers telling you this nonsense. And also towards their followers who repeat those falsehoods. Nobody ever complains about their tone, do they? If someone is going to lie to you, you can bet it's going to be a soothing lie.

I understand that people don't like to be scammed. You spent a lot of money on that computer. You could have spent a little bit more and gotten a great experience for many years, but now you're stuck. I've noticed that people get more angry at the person who tells them they were scammed than at the person who scammed them. That's the problem with this forum. People get these ideas from the internet and then come here when they doesn't work. We always have to be the bearers of bad news.

Data loss in that setup is as unrecoverable as with a failing internal drive. If you don't have a backup, you don't have a backup. If you have one, you can recover.

The internal drive is much less likely to fail than any external. You are correct about needing a backup. Unfortunately, that will require the purchase of yet another external drive. Don't share a Time Machine backup with other data. That's something else you'll regret later.