Using multiple hard drives

Question

I moved recently (like, yesterday) from Windows to Ubuntu. My computer has one SSD and one HDD, and I installed the operating system on the SSD. Now, I would like to keep most of my things in the HDD, but use the SSD for important stuff. In Windows, the drives were clearly different, but I don't understand how I can do this in Ubuntu. So, how can I use both drives, and how do I know where I'm installing/downloading/etc applications and/or files? I haven't done anything yet, so everything should be completely at a "starting point". Also, I am completely new to Ubuntu.

The HDD's partitions should be clearly visible in the left panel of the file browser. Those icons should be clickable, and should take you to their corresponding partitions. — mikewhatever, Jul 06 '17 at 21:39
This is a very large question, and I am marking to close it as a duplicate of https://askubuntu.com/questions/138547/how-to-understand-the-ubuntu-file-system-layout. Basically, all of the disk structure starts at /, the root of the file system. Each directory under / (/home for example) can actually be a separate disk, a separate partition on a single disk, or a simple sub-directory of the root directory. Additionally, links are often used to redirect an inconvenient directory name... — Charles Green, Jul 06 '17 at 23:34

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 06 '17 at 22:33

Linux operating systems organize the file system in a tree structure. Since you installed the OS to your SSD, that drive is the root of the tree and is mounted at / Where on the tree the HDD is depends on how and where you mount it. It can be anywhere on the tree you desire. (One common location to mount a secondary drive on a home system is /home as that is the location on the tree that by default holds all the users files. For a good overview, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LinuxFilesystemTreeOverview

Using multiple hard drives

1 Answers1