I have been using Ubuntu on my laptop for a while and in love with it and now I want to use it on my main PC. I have a 240 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. I have windows10 installed on the SSD and use the HDD for general files. I want to freshly install Ubuntu on my system. How should I use my SDD as mount/ and HDD as /Home?
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Yes, I want my root folder / in the SSD and /home in the HDD. And I don't want to install it alongside windows10. I want to format both SSD and HDD and freshly install Ubuntu only. – yaa__ Aug 31 '20 at 09:41
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My wife carries her home partition around on an external drive when we travel. She unplugs it from her computer in Canada and plus it into her computer in Sri Lanka or into my laptop when we are on the road, works great see: https://askubuntu.com/questions/991189/using-existing-home-directory-from-a-bootable-external-drive – C.S.Cameron Aug 31 '20 at 10:28
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See the original part of this answer (not the update) for another solution. – user68186 Aug 31 '20 at 11:34
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How should I use my SDD as mount/ and HDD as /Home?
Don't. Put /home on the SSD. The configuration files benefit from the speed off the SSD and if the HDD is too slow to spin up during boot, it could end up not mounting your HDD (not likely this is an issue anymore on modern Linux though).
What is better: there is a configuration file on /home/$USER/.config called user-dirs.dirs where you can set where the location is for your personal files. Alter that to point to the HDD.
This file holds lines like this:
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
That means on every login it will check if /home/$USER/Desktop exists and create it if not. If you change it to
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="/discworld/Desktop"
and discworld is the mount point for the HDD it will create that directory and all applications will assume that is where your Desktop is. Works for all the directories in this file and the ONLY accepted directories are $HOME/ and an absolute directory (so starting with /).
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Thank you for the answer. But how exactly should I make these changes. I'm fairly new to Linux and I'm not understanding the user-dirs.dirs file format. – yaa__ Aug 31 '20 at 09:37
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stupid question i guess but what if i did used my HDD as /home during installation? will it cause me problems in the future? – yaa__ Aug 31 '20 at 13:26
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2Interesting way to have data on HDD. I typically use data partition and just mount each folder. But using /home often better for new user as it mounts, sets ownership & permissions. Creating own partition(s) require mount & set of ownership & permissions. 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 Aug 31 '20 at 14:08
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If you are doing a completely new installation, then you can just use the manual partitioning process. Make sure to boot in UEFI mode, and that you create an EFI System Partition (ESP) and enough swap space (which is also used for hibernation).
How to use manual partitioning during installation? has a few details.
Adding the harddisk as /home in the installer will create the necessary setup to automatically mount it during boot, and this setup is completely transparent to all applications.
This could fail if the HDD is an external USB disk, as these take a while to be detected, but I have a low opinion of external harddisks anyway.
Simon Richter
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Given that you have experience with Ubuntu on your laptop, you may be able to estimate if this scenario is feasible.
Put both / and /home on the SSD. Use the HDD for big and relatively rarely used files, such as pictures and videos.
You can mount the HDD as (something like) /home/$USER/big-files.
That way, you get fast boot, fast access to your configuration files and fast access to regularly-used files.
Simon’s answer shows the ‘how’.
Zanna
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Peter Bill
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