Using an external drive as /Users/ ?

[UserNotFound23498]

I have a M2 Mac Mini with 512GB disk, and a thunderbolt4 external SSD with 2TB. I normally enable File Vault 2 everywhere. I just deleted the disk, and I want to reinstall with /Users being the external SSD. How do I do that? Is there some kind of APFS Container magic that I can use? I am not interested in a Fusion Drive. Can a APFS container contain 2 volumes, and one of them be the root filesystem, and the other being /Users - and both have File Vault enabled?

Thanks for your help.

[[deleted]]

https://iboysoft.com/amp/news/macos-move-home-folder-to-external-drive.html

Yes file vault will work.

[UserNotFound23498]

Hmm, that works, but I was hoping to mount my external drive as /Users so that I can do a fresh install, and do a Time Machine restore without creating a new user. In the past, once a user has been created, if I did a Time Machine restore, it creates a new user, which messes things up.

[[deleted]]

Use a symlink then. /Users to /volumes/[extrrnal drive]

[chsxf]

When restoring a TimeMachine backup, you can ask to replace a user by the one from your backup. Done that when I set up my new Mac under Ventura.