MacOS X - how to move separate data partition into home directory?

Question

I'm having a MacBook 13" with MACOS X 10.6.8.

Up to now I had a separate data partition called /Volumes/Data and a partition for the OS, user folders, etc. /Volumes/System

I want to merge the 2 partition into one and integrate the "Data" directory into the home directory of my user account and have system and data on one partition.

• I wonder how I could do that without breaking all the applications, scripts, aliases and things which are referring to the path /Volumes/data
  Would it be sufficient to move it into ~/data and then create a symbolic link named "data" in the /Volumes/ directory? Or is there another way to create a "virtual volume" which points to the path in my home directory?

Answer 1

Move /Volumes/Data to your home directory, e.g.

mv /Volumes/Data ~/Data

Verify that everything is there. Try unmounting the partiotion and accessing your new Data files just to make sure. If everything is ok, unmount the /Volumes/Data permanently.

If your /Volumes is a directory and Data was the mount point, you may have to delete /Volumes/Data

rmdir /Volumes/Data

Then create a symbolic link to the new location:

ln -s ~/data /Volumes/Data

Always a good idea to create a backup first!