For the root-privileges: take a look at 'sudo', you can define users who should be allowed to do specified tasks that normally requires root-privileges. (That explanation wasn't very good, check manpages or search the forum! 'sudo' is rather easy to use.)
About the home-partition: su to root, edit /etc/fstab, add a line:
/dev/hdb1 /home/XYZ ext3 defaults 1 2
(if it's an ext3-partition)
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