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I have everything currently installed on a 120GB SSD. I've recently installed a 2nd drive (480 ssd) which I've partitioned for about 90% personal use and 10% in case I add 'other' purposes. I@ve not yet stated a mount point in fstab.

I want to shift my complete home folder to this drive (its main partition).

I know the answer is 'google it', and I've done that but can't seem to get a definitive answer and nothing directly referring to 18.04.

Can someone please point me towards a good guide for doing this? Do I need to boot into a live distro?

Many thanks.

Roger06
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2 Answers2

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Please keep /home itself at the same disk that has your system files and ONLY move your personal directories. Move the directories in your /home to your new destination and alter ~./config/users-dirs.dirs to reflect this change.

Reason: in the case your 2nd disk does not mount your /home is not mounted leaving you with a broken system.

I have not yet stated a mount point in fstab.

You do need to do this first though. Have a look at ...

Rinzwind
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  • I keep /home inside / (root) but it is tiny as it only has user configuration files, mostly hidden. But all data is in a data partition. I primarily do this as I have multiple installs and want to access same data in all of them. But may want different user settings as I can then test changes without changing main working install. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1013677/storing-data-on-second-hdd-mounting & https://askubuntu.com/questions/1058756/installing-all-applications-on-a-ssd-disk-and-putting-all-files-on-hdd-disk – oldfred Jan 20 '20 at 14:18
  • That's what I do too. I have hmm 9 different installs now (at work; not just Ubuntu). So much easier to just mount a disk into a linux system with your own data. – Rinzwind Jan 20 '20 at 14:22
  • So if I were to mount the 2nd drive at /hdd for example, I'd move my Videos folder to XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/hdd/Videos" (after creating that folder folder of course) ? – Roger06 Jan 20 '20 at 15:28
  • @Roger06 yes. I would use /mnt/hdd/Videos (/mnt is for mounting internal disks, /media for external disks) OR use a dedicated directory (my system had a /discworld/ that has all my user dirs (Desktop, Videos etc) and holds all other stuff like backups and vbox containers. – Rinzwind Jan 20 '20 at 15:32
  • What have I done wrong?

    I've mounted the disk at /mnt/hdd. I've changed the line in my user-dirs.dirs for Videos to XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/mnt/hdd/Videos". This is the folder I get when I click the 'Videos' link in the side bar of a Files window, but if I click the 'Videos' folder in the main panel of my home folder I still get the old one. I've rebooted.

    If I delete the 'old' one with the 'new' one show in the panel?

    Thanks

     – Roger06 Jan 23 '20 at 18:15
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Changing user-dirs.dirs seems to have no affect. I've also tested in a VM running Mint and it does not change the location of one of the folders. Is there something else that needs to run? Does fstab need another addition?

Thanks

Roger06
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