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I'm trying to install just Ubuntu on a SSD, and put my programs and data on a separate hard drive. I've created mount points on the separate hard drive for /home, but I keep getting a grub rescue screen when booting from the SSD. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong here.

Zanna
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Scotty Tollison
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  • It's unclear what you mean by "my programs". What are they, and how are they installed? Also, what mount points have you created? – mikewhatever Nov 29 '17 at 17:26
  • like if i install ubuntu without moving anything, it installs everything like discord, evolution, firefox, etc to the main drive. My goal is to just have ubuntu on one drive and have everything else on a separate drive. I created mount points on the second drive for /home, and on the main SSD, i created /boot, an efi partition, /root, and /swap – Scotty Tollison Nov 29 '17 at 17:31
  • Nevermind, i solved my own problem and got it working, I installed GRUB to another drive by accident. but my home folder is working exactly how i want it to, Grub is just in the wrong spot. – Scotty Tollison Nov 29 '17 at 17:49
  • @ScottyTollison put the directories of /home on the HDD. Keep /home on the SSD. System and config files(like all the hidden files in /home) benefit from the ssd speed. – Rinzwind Nov 29 '17 at 18:03

1 Answers1

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This should be relatively simple to accomplish simply by analyzing an existing installation and adjusting accordingly. By mounting /home on a seperate drive or partition, the user data will be stored there. As far as programs go, it's pretty simple to determine where those are stored.

Consider this snippet:

me@zippy-64bit:~$ which ls
/bin/ls
me@zippy-64bit:~$ which fdisk
/sbin/fdisk
me@zippy-64bit:~$

As you can see the majority of your programs are by default installed in /bin/ and /sbin

Placing the content of these directories on a separate drive or partition should be simple to do when booted from live media, and adjusting your fstab to mount the appropriate drive/partition at the desired location isn't difficult.

Personally, I prefer to have my programs on my SSD as launch speed is at least as important to me as boot speed.

You may be getting a grub rescue screen for a number of reasons which have likely already been answered here.

Elder Geek
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  • Might be worth putting /user on the other drive, too. – Zeiss Ikon Nov 29 '17 at 17:49
  • @ZeissIkon you mean /usr ? – Elder Geek Nov 29 '17 at 17:50
  • Yep. Sorry, right now I'm on a terminal connected to a Windows computer in another state... – Zeiss Ikon Nov 29 '17 at 17:51
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    /usr should not be on its own partition. And never on another disk: if that 2nd disk fails booting fails. Nor should you put /home. If you want personal files on a hdd move the directories in /home to that partition. If the 2nd disk fails booting does not fail but will re-create /home /. – Rinzwind Nov 29 '17 at 18:02
  • @Rinzwind I suppose for some that would be a catastrophe. I certainly wouldn't do that on an enterprise system. On my personal system I do it all the time (mount home on it's own drive) and yes, I've had the system fail to boot once when the drive failed, but it was rather simple to replace the drive and reimage from backup – Elder Geek Nov 30 '17 at 02:20