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I find a few threads that essentially say "you don't have to do that", so here goes: I already can find how to move the Home folder for a single user off my SSD. I think I have an idea how to do that for multiple users, but haven't tried it yet. The big one is, with only a 128GB SSD I don't want to load up too many applications on it. Once I start getting a slew of games from Steam, I'm bound to fill up and slow down the SSD. I'd like a good way to move the directory those applications will install in over to the 2TB HDD (sdb1). SSDs run slow if you fill them up, so please don't tell me to just let it go. This is a real issue for more and more of us now that you can get a SSD like mine for around $60.

What I suspect I can do, but am not so sure, is to use the same technique for moving the Home folder to move the usr directory, or maybe better yet just usr\games (if that's where Steam will put the games I get) over to the HDD. Could someone give an example of doing that? I'd move it right after a fresh install, if that simplifies things.

Jeffrey Davis
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You don't have to do that!

As you have read elsewhere the best answer is, don't mess with the system folders. You can move the /home folder to a dedicated partition in the HDD (your sdb) using the official help page However, I recommend keeping the /home as well as /home/[upir user ID] in the SSD as all your personal configuration files are there. Keeping the personal configuration in the SSD keeps the system snappy.

Steam

Steam games take up a lot of space. However, it does not keep the games in the system folders, such as /usr. Your steam games are in /home/[your user name]/.local/share/Steam. See Where are Steam games installed?

See Installing programs in root vs home partitions? for more on the how to use an SSD and HDD.

Follow the instructions in Do I need Intel Smart Response when installing Ubuntu? to move some of your large personal folders like ~/.local/share/Steam to your hard drive and create symbolic links to the SSD.

I recommend creating an ext4 partition in sdb so that file and folder permissions used by Ubuntu can be preserved. These will be lost if you dump the folders in a NTFS partition. See I want to reformat my home partition from ext3 to ntfs

Also see How to save applications for re-install or upgrade? for why moving some apps to a different partition and keeping the default apps in their original place is a bad idea.

Hope this helps

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