Relocating a user to another drive WITHOUT ownership issues?

[macstatic]

What's the correct way to relocate a user's folder? I'm pretty sure I've done it correctly, but when I log into the (newly moved) user account in order to test it I'm met with several error messages which appear to be ownership related.

Here's what I've done:

1) on my Mac Pro (mid-2010) I've added a new SSD (with a clean installation of MacOS 10.9 Mavericks and further updated to 10.13 High Sierra -keeping the HFS+ disk format).
Besides one administrative user-account to keep on that SSD I want to create additional accounts which I'll be moving to a large harddrive physically located inside the same Mac Pro.

2) So in order to create a new user-account I go to the "Users & groups" system preference, and once that's done I immediately copy that entire user folder over to the hard drive:

3) Once the new user folder has been copied over I once again go to the "Users & groups" system preference, this time right-click on the new user (Jonathan) which brings up "Advanced options":

4) Now I want to make MacOS see the new user at its new location (on the hard drive), and click the "choose" button, then select the newly copied user folder on my hard drive:

5) Next I log out of my "test" user, and into "Jonathan" where upon the Finder desktop appears I also get a number of error messages (I'm not even able to take a screenshot because of this, so I had to take a photo with my camera):

Obviously something has gone wrong, but what? And how should I do this correctly?
NOTE: after posting I read somewhere that you need to first restart the computer after step 4, then log into the newly created/moved account. I tried that as well but got the same results.

 

[KeesMacPro]

See post #2 :

best way to move volume of user folders to new HDD ?

No, another El Capitan install is not necessary,just format it to HFS+ and drag the Home folder you'd like to move ,to this drive. A user account is bound to a certain OS install, so even with another drive with the same OS, AFAIK you can't (easily) add another user folder and have the...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[macstatic]

Thanks.
For some reason copying a user folder to a new location has caused all sorts of ownership problems for me. I have no idea why, but I found out that a hidden (to me at least) MacOS feature called "Paste exactly" solves this.
I also got some other useful ideas concerning this elsewhere in that same thread.

 

[KeesMacPro]

In case of doubts or looking for alternative ways: the way I describe in the link post #2 is the way i've been doing for years and still do.
It has never failed.

 

[macstatic]

Hmmmm.. that's strange, because what you wrote there appears to be the same method I've described in this thread.
But then I re-read your instructions and noticed step 2:

Editing/moving Home folders can be done, and this way always worked for me:

1. install the "new" HDD ,format and give it a permanent name.
2. log in to the user account you'd like to move.
3. While logged in drag the Home folder to the desired new location.
Dont copy/paste, but drag it, the copying should start immediately.
4. After copying is completed , set the new Home location in Users/Groups under advanced options.
5. restart and log in to the mentioned account and check for the Home symbol in the new location.
If all is correct you can delete the "old" Home folder.

So the key to resolve any permission issues is to be logged into the same account you're working on?
I believe I logged into an admin account, created the new account, then continued by copying the new account over to the other drive and finally changing its path.
Then, when done, I logged out and logged into the new account (with the new path) and got all sorts of permission problems. It all worked great with the exact same method though when I did a "paste exactly".
I first learnt about the relocating thing when reading this article at the Mac Performance Guide. I've just re-read it and as far as I can see this isn't explicitly mentioned, so when I got it working I might just have done it out of ignorance, and now, when it didn't work I was thinking that I shouldn't mess with an "active" account, just like you don't mess with an active drive, but boot from a different drive and work on the other one from there.