Using 2 Disks, unsure how to partition correctly

[Guest]

Hi, this is my first post so forgive me if I make any oversights.

I can't figure out how to install Kubuntu across 2 disks. I basically want just the OS to be installed on my 120GB SSD and I want programs and my /Home directory to be installed to my 1TB HDD. My PC can boot with both UEFI and BIOS. If anyone could help me out with this it would be a real life saver because I'd hate to have to put the SSD I just bought back away because I can't figure this out. I have a feeling I should be using UEFI and the GPT partition scheme with LVM. I think I should then make the second drive the mount point for /Home and also the /? directory for programs but I really don't know for sure. Thanks for taking the time to read this and any feedback is appreciated.

[anika200]

Are you booting from Kubuntu live image? If you want exact instructions you will probably want to supply at least your current disk layout using

fdisk -l

at a console or a screen shot or something.

I think you have the right idea though, just select manual partition schema during installation and put "/" on the SDD and "/home" on your large drive. You will not be able to put apps on the large drive as linux does no work that way exactly. You can put your swap partition on either drive, mine hardly ever gets used.

Here is a good article to read that should clear things up a bit hopefully. http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/i...kubuntu_2.html

[dibl]

It's actually not difficult. The first assumption I'll make is that your SSD is recognized as a bootable device (don't laugh -- I have one that is not). Using Gparted, either from the live CD or a Parted Magic USB stick, make your SSD a single partition, filesystem type ext4, and make your hdd two partitions, first is 4G swap and the rest is ext4.

Now install Kubuntu entirely on the SSD, using "manual" partition, and don't change/repartition anything that you previously set up. I think the installer will pick up the swap space that you made on the hdd so accept that mount point. Let grub be installed "to mbr" which will be the mbr of the SSD. Do not be concerned at this point about the rest of the space on the hdd. When the installation is finished, reboot and Kubuntu should come up and let you log in.

Once logged in, you have a short list of steps to finish the configuration that you want.

1. Make a mount point in /mnt -- I call it "DATA":

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/DATA

2. In konsole, determine the UUID of the big partition that you want to mount:

sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list

It shouldn't be difficult to figure out which partition is the non-OS ext4 partition (it is the one mounted in /media). Leave this table open in konsole so you can cut and paste from it.

Now open kate in superuser mode and then open /etc/fstab for editing:

Alt-F2 "kdesudo kate" with no quote marks, click "file, open" and browse to /etc/fstab and click it to open.

3. In your konsole window, carefully highlight the UUID number, excluding quote marks, and right-click "copy". In your kate window, I think you'll see the large partition of your hdd with a mount point in /media and some annotation like "During installation this was /dev/sdb2" or some such note. What you want to do is change the mount point to /mnt/DATA, and paste in the UUID number as the device ID. An example should make it clear what you want to see:

UUID=2bbc4079-e05d-43a3-865b-5b3d3f4af0f5     /mnt/DATA     ext4         defaults,noatime           0    2

Make sure you didn't inadvertently copy and paste one of the quote marks. Save it and do a shutdown-reboot.

4. Almost done. After logging in, open konsole and issue

sudo mount

or else open dolphin and browse to /mnt and confirm that the partition is mounted there. If so, using either the superuser konsole or dolphin in superuser mode:

Alt-F2 "kdesudo dolphin"

make your user's data directories under /mnt/DATA. For example MUSIC, DOCS, VIDEOS, IMAGES, etc. With dolphin in superuser mode, set the permissions on each of these folders to the user (or "everyone") as appropriate for your system. Remember that /mnt/DATA will remain a root-owned directory, but the data folders underneath will be user folders.

5. Open dolphin as user and split the view. In the user's home folder, delete any default directories named "Docs", "Music", etc. Now in one of the dolphin panels change to /mnt/DATA. From that panel, click the first user folder, drag it across the division to your user folder, and then from the popup service menu choose "link here". Do the same for the rest of the user folders under /mnt/DATA.

Voila! You are done, and you can start saving your data in the linked folders. You have your data on the hard drive and your OS on the SSD, with a swap partition also on the data drive in the event it is needed.

[oshunluvr]

dibl's explaination is excellent. I woudl only add if you're using ext4 on the SSD for your linux install, that you partition the SSD so that 100GB or so isn't wasted. You'll have a difficult time filling much more than 16GB with your install so you might as well partition now so the extra space isn't wasted. I would make partitions for four installs (daily user, backup, upgrade, playground) and still keep the swap on the SSD.

An alternative to partitioning is to use BTRFS so you can use subvolumes instead of partitions.

[anika200]

dibl's explaination is excellent.

Yes I agree the explanation is good.
But, would it not be much simpler to just use manual partitioning at install time and specify /home be mounted on the larger hdd as the op wants? This way everything is already set up and no fiddling with making dirs for music, photo etc...
I have only done 3-4 installs with Kubuntu so maybe I am remembering something wrong?

[oshunluvr]

Yes I agree the explanation is good.
But, would it not be much simpler to just use manual partitioning at install time and specify /home be mounted on the larger hdd as the op wants? This way everything is already set up and no fiddling with making dirs for music, photo etc...
I have only done 3-4 installs with Kubuntu so maybe I am remembering something wrong?

Yes of course. I presumed that the OP had already installed. Manual partitioning at install time is the easiest choice.

[dibl]

But, would it not be much simpler to just use manual partitioning at install time and specify /home be mounted on the larger hdd as the op wants?

Theoretically, "yes". Practically, "yes for experienced users". Just search this forum for screwed up installations due to partitioning confusion. I find that separating the partitioning process and doing it first, and then subsequently doing a clean installation on pre-existing partitions reduces confusion for Linux novices. Also, for users booting multiple Linux systems (common among new users), you don't want a shared /home directory, due to variations in ~/.config/xxx between different versions and desktop environments. That's why I recommend splitting off the data on a pure data partition.

@oshunluvr -- good point about using the rest of the SSD for swap and some other data. I run my VMs on SSD space that is not used for the OS.