SSD and HDD setup with multiple users

Hi All,

As Chrome and Firefox is starting to phase out support for 10.8, I decided to update my Mid-2011 27" iMac to 10.11. Since I had an SSD kit laying around, I decided to go for the SSD boot drive + HDD storage drive setup.

Following Matt Gemmell's suggestion (http://mattgemmell.com/2011/06/21/using-os-x-with-an-ssd-plus-hdd-setup/) I decided to keep the entire home directory of the admin user on the SSD, while for my standard users, I would point an alias to the HDD for Documents, Music, Pictures, etc. (Library and Desktop will remain on the boot drive).

I successfully created the symlinks but for some reason when I log into the standard user accounts, I am prompted for Admin password to create/delete files and folders.

This is my setup:

SSD - boot drive containing Desktop and Library folders for each standard user. For admin user, the home folder is untouched.

HDD - on the root of the drive, i created a folder for each user: user1, user2, user3 and gave ownership of each folder to that user. For example, sudo chown -R user2:staff User2/

As suggested by another user, I gave ownership of the HDD to root:wheel.

For troubleshooting purposes, I have permissions set as 777 for all directories on the HDD but am still being prompted for Admin credentials.

THANKS in advance for any insights on where to focus my troubleshooting. Below are more details.

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Here are the current permissions for directories of /Volumes/HDD:

drwxrwxrwx 11 user1 staff 374 Feb 20 22:07 user1

drwxrwxrwx 10 user2 staff 340 Feb 20 21:51 user2

drwxrwxrwx@ 11 user3 staff 374 Feb 20 22:05 user3

Here are current permissions for /Users/user2/ (on SSD boot volume) showing the symlinks in place:

drwxrwxrwx@ 79 user2 staff 2686 Feb 4 15:03 Desktop

lrwxr-xr-x 1 user2 staff 38 Feb 20 21:45 Documents -> /Volumes/HDD/user2/Documents

lrwxr-xr-x 1 user2 staff 38 Feb 20 21:45 Downloads -> /Volumes/HDD/user2/Downloads

drwxrwxrwx@ 52 user2 staff 1768 Feb 19 16:52 Library

lrwxr-xr-x 1 user2 staff 35 Feb 20 21:45 Movies -> /Volumes/HDD/user2/Movies

lrwxr-xr-x 1 user2 staff 34 Feb 20 21:46 Music -> /Volumes/HDD/user2/Music

lrwxr-xr-x 1 user2 staff 37 Feb 20 21:46 Pictures -> /Volumes/HDD/user2/Pictures

drwxrwxrwx+ 3 user2 staff 102 Feb 18 18:28 Sites