/home on secondary drive?

[Fernando]

Hi all.
I'm planning to add a new SSD drive to my system and I think I will make a new clean install. So obviously what I want is to install Kubuntu 20.04 in the SSD drive and use the old HDD as a storage unit but I'm not sure if I should have /home folder in the SSD drive or in the old HDD. In fact, right now I'm not sure if it is possible at all to set a second drive as /home during installation...
What would in your opinion be the most suitable setting? The new SSD drive is 256 GB while the old HDD is 1TB.
Now that I'm on it, would it be possible to set /home pointing to the old existing one on the HDD WITHOUT formatting the drive and then just delete all the old system folders in that drive?
Thanks!

[Beerislife]

I recently bought a new PC that contains a 256Gb SSD and a 1Tb hard disk. I shrank the Windows 10 partition down on the SSD by 60Gb to install KDE Neon system and formatted the hard disk as /home. No problems at all here. There is a hidden Windows partition on the hard disk but I didn't touch it in case something goes wrong during the warranty period and I have to return it for repair. I suppose you could delete all the partitions except /home on your disk and use Partition Manager to expand /home to fill the disk.

[oshunluvr]

Hi all.
I'm planning to add a new SSD drive to my system and I think I will make a new clean install. So obviously what I want is to install Kubuntu 20.04 in the SSD drive and use the old HDD as a storage unit but I'm not sure if I should have /home folder in the SSD drive or in the old HDD. In fact, right now I'm not sure if it is possible at all to set a second drive as /home during installation...

Totally possible and in fact, commonly done.

What would in your opinion be the most suitable setting? The new SSD drive is 256 GB while the old HDD is 1TB.

The answer will depend on your needs and desires. IMO, unless you know you are going to need a larger home folder than the SSD can support, I'd keep home on the SSD just for shear speed of access. Why use the HD that's 5 times slower if you don't have to?

Now that I'm on it, would it be possible to set /home pointing to the old existing one on the HDD WITHOUT formatting the drive and then just delete all the old system folders in that drive?
Thanks!

Yes, but you'd have to do a bit more than that to have a "normal" home folder.. Normally, when setting up a different file system (partition) it's mounted at "/home". Currently your drive has a /home folder already on it, so unless you did something your new home would be at /home/home. Easily remedied though - just move the user folders out of the old /home the the root directory of the file system and all is well.

My opinion: I'd keep home on the SSD and use the HD as a backup location and storage. If you want /home on a separate partition, partition the SSD. If you have a particular folder that's quite large - like a Music folder - put it on the HD by itself and just link or mount it to your home for easy access.

It good you're thinking about this in advance so you can make a solid plan. I also suggest using your current install as a backup in case something goes wrong with the new one - dual boot.

[jglen490]

I do it all the time. My current Kubuntu 20.04.1 is / and swap on a 120GB SSD (clearly overkill!!), and /home on a 500GB SSD. It works great.

The first time I went to that configuration, I saved everything then on /home. I connected both drives, configured both drives, and installed the OS to the smaller drive and restored the data to /home on the larger. Now when I do a clean install I format the smaller OS drive, and select but NOT format the larger /home drive. The fstab file configures correctly, and every thing works as it should. Of course, I always backup /home to external drives routinely, whether I'm installing new or just running my existing OS version.

Once you are there, it works great and there are (in my opinion) a lot of pluses to having not only a separate /home partition, but also having that on a separate drive.

[oldgeek]

I was thinking of doing the same thing, as my Kubuntu install and /home folder together take up over 256 GiB. But I use BTRFS, so how would I do this? And how would I do the snapshots, same way?

[oshunluvr]

I was thinking of doing the same thing, as my Kubuntu install and /home folder together take up over 256 GiB. But I use BTRFS, so how would I do this? And how would I do the snapshots, same way?

Snapshots by their nature must be on the same file system as the subvolume. However, you have a lot of options with BTRFS. You can;

1. create a new BTRFS file system on another device, "send" your subvolume to it and change the mount in fstab to reflect the new file system UUID.
2. add an additional partition or device to the existing BTRFS file system.
3. move the entire file system to another, larger device device.

What will work best will depend on your actual situation and needs.

[mr_raider]

I would keep / and /home on the SSD. Just format the HDD with any filesystem of your choice (ext4 or btrfs) then mount the new partition in a convenient place like:

/home/myusername/myslowdrive

Then create sub folders under myslowdrive that contain what you like (videos, music, photos, etc...) You can then set these folders as teh default location in KDE by using the lcoations dialog in settings manager.

Remember that you want as much of your system as possible on the SSD, and only use the HDD for rarely accessed material.

[oldgeek]

Thanks for the responses. I haven't bought the SSD yet, but am considering it.

[Fernando]

So... Other than storing music, video, photos, documents or whatelse, what is the function of /home? I mean, what other things may I/the system have to access regularly? Maybe I have a little OCD but I'd like to have ALL the data on the same drive and it somehow bothers me if I'm going to have personal folders on both of them. I'm not sure I'm making myself clear, sorry...

[sithlord48]

Your home folder serves two main functions
1. A place for your documents , pictures, music , videos etc.
2. A place to store all your settings for various applications. (system wide configs are in /etc)

Other things can be in your home for example if your a steam users all your steam games are installed to your home folder. Other applications may store content in a hidden folder within your home folder as well. You can also install Applications for just yourself in ~/.local

[claydoh]

So... Other than storing music, video, photos, documents or whatelse, what is the function of /home? I mean, what other things may I/the system have to access regularly? Maybe I have a little OCD but I'd like to have ALL the data on the same drive and it somehow bothers me if I'm going to have personal folders on both of them. I'm not sure I'm making myself clear, sorry...

https://www.linux.com/training-tutor...-root-folders/


The /home directory is the dir where a users settings are stored and has read/write permissions specifically for that user.

It is in no way required to be a separate partition or on a separate drive by any means. Linux being a network OS doesn't care where a directory comes from once a thing is mounted.


As to having files across multiple drives and the like the only place you have permissions to create ands save files and folders (by default) is in your /home/username directory. So for the most part this is the only place you'll be working from no matter where it is located.

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[mr_raider]

To add, you can have /home/myuser on the same drive as /. But you can have /home/myuser/Videos on a different drive and have it mounted under your home. In your daily usage, you wont actually see that everything in the Videos sufolder is actually on a different drive. It's transparent to the OS.

[jglen490]

Correct. You can have /home under /, and therefore one partition and one drive. You can have /home on a separate partition from /, and either on the same disk, or another disk. You can have /home sub directories on separate partitions, and any any number of drives. The only thing is each subdirectory must be named /home/<sub1>, /home/<sub2>, etc.