2nd HDD

[GeBal]

Soon, I'm going to setup my desktop-PC completely new.
I want to use a SSD for / and swap.Then I think it should work, using a seperate HDD to mount it as /home so that my user-data will be on that HDD.
When installing, I usually use the "something different" - option to partition .
Is there something wrong to my idea, so this wouldn't work?

GB

[GreyGeek]

Give Btrfs a shot and forget trying to estimate partition sizes. Btrfs subvolumes can work like partitions and all subvolumes have access to all remaining free space. You'll never run out of room on /home or /, unless you totally run out of disk space.
Oshunluvr has some excellent posts on this topic.

[Rod J]

Soon, I'm going to setup my desktop-PC completely new.
I want to use a SSD for / and swap.Then I think it should work, using a seperate HDD to mount it as /home so that my user-data will be on that HDD.
When installing, I usually use the "something different" - option to partition .
Is there something wrong to my idea, so this wouldn't work?

GB

Nope, that should work just fine.

I use a modified version of this with my main PC: the SSD contains / and /home and the HDD contains the large Documents, Music, Pictures and Video folders. So, all the large video files, etc are on the big HDD.

To set this up I installed the system on the SSD and left the HDD alone (except for partitioning and formatting, which I did prior to the install using GParted). After the install completed I moved the Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos (and other folders that would contain large files) to the HDD and symlinked them back to the SSD. So as far as the system is concerned nothing has changed but in actual fact the big stuff is on the drive with the most space. I think doing it this way is the best of both worlds: /home stays on the fast (but small) SSD but the bulky stuff is actually on the HDD. I know several people on here have done similar things with their systems.

[GeBal]

Hi Rod,
thank you for this idea, I will give it a thought, or two.
I will make me knowledgable about the details about moving the folders and symlinking.
If I can "get" it,this could be a good solution.

GB

[GeBal]

I might give it a try, thank you.
But first I will do a little reading about Btrfs. If I remember right , I read somewhere by accident, that this filesystem would not be supported/developed anymore.
I will look around for advantages and disadvantages there are.
Thank you nevertheless

GB

[vinnywright]

If I remember right , I read somewhere by accident, that this filesystem would not be supported/developed anymore.
Thank you nevertheless

GB

you may have read something about this @hear ,,,,,,,it's red hat that's dropping it for in house reasons ,,,,mostly that the 1 dev they had for it left .
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?t=72195

I also do the / & home on 1 drive and use a large drive for my data by system linking the usual home directory's that containe large amounts of data to the large drive .

works grate for me and the 5 OS's I have on this box as all the installs have access to the same data.

VINNY

[GeBal]

Yes,red hat,that's it.
So I'm going to do / and home on the 128gb ssd, and use one of my hdd for data and one for backups.

You're very helpful, thanks alot.

GB

[vinnywright]

Yes,red hat,that's it.
So I'm going to do / and home on the 128gb ssd, and use one of my hdd for data and one for backups.

You're very helpful, thanks alot.

GB

hears how it looks @hear

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ ls -la | grep lrwxrwxrwx
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny       34 Mar 19  2016 Calibre Library -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Calibre Library
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny       28 Mar 19  2016 Documents -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Documents
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny       28 Mar 19  2016 Downloads -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Downloads
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny       27 Mar 19  2016 dwhelper -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/dwhelper
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny       24 Mar 19  2016 Music -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Music
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny       27 Mar 19  2016 Pictures -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx  1 vinny vinny       25 Mar 19  2016 Videos -> /mnt/btrfs/kubuntu/Videos

/mnt/btrfs is where I have the 1TB drive mounted(yes it's formated btrfs) ,,,,,"kubuntu" is a directory/folder on the drive and the rest are self explanatory

VINNY

[GeBal]

Since I'm not very deep into the terminal-thing yet, I looked around and found I might be able to do the moving through dolphin.
This is my idea: open /home & 2nd hd , move the standardfolders to it and create shortcuts of them in /home.
This should work,shouldn't it?
Question: Are downloads automaticaly redirected to the folder on the 2nd hd or do I have to adjust the filepaths manually in settings?

GB

[vinnywright]

Since I'm not very deep into the terminal-thing yet, I looked around and found I might be able to do the moving through dolphin.
This is my idea: open /home & 2nd hd , move the standardfolders to it and create shortcuts of them in /home.
This should work,shouldn't it?
Question: Are downloads automaticaly redirected to the folder on the 2nd hd or do I have to adjust the filepaths manually in settings?

GB

what you want to do is ...if your going to use Dolphin as root (it will nead to be to do this) use kdesudo dolphin in Krunner or a terminal...

first make the folders you want on the 2nd HD after you have it mounted to a place like /mnt/hd1 (can be anywhere and named anything) and have an entry for it in /etc/fstab so it is mounted at boot .

then IF you have anything in those folders on the SSD in /home/you copy it to the corresponding folder on the second HD.

then delete the orginal folders in /home/you on the SSD and drag and drop the ones you made on the HD back to /home/you on the SSD ,,,when you drop them their you will get a popup to copy,move,or link ,,,chose link ,,,,as you do each one right click it , click properties permissions tab and make sure the owner and group is you you not root root ,,,if root change
to you ,,,,done

and yes the system will seamlessly use them as if they were the originals ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

VINNY

EDIT: if you do not feel comfortable doing all this at first ,,,just get the system installed to the SSD and your other dives installed in the box then get back to US and we will walk you through the rest .

[SpecialEd]

Thanks Vinny that was much easier. I am just up to symbolic links in the Linux book I'm reading but using Dolphin was so much simpler. BTW, I did not need to open Dolphin as Root.

[Rod J]

Yes, it shouldn't be necessary to use Dolphin as root to do that as the folders you are moving are owned by you and as long as the destination file system is also owned by you. You would need to be root to move folders in / that are owned by root, however.

Glad you got it sorted ... it does work seamlessly as Vinny said.

[vinnywright]

Thanks Vinny that was much easier. I am just up to symbolic links in the Linux book I'm reading but using Dolphin was so much simpler. BTW, I did not need to open Dolphin as Root.

ya it depends on if the mounted drive was root owned or not ,,,,+ it's been a wile since I set mine up like this

@hear the /mnt/btrfs is owned by root

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:/mnt$ ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Mar 19  2016 .
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Aug 10 18:55 ..
drwxr-xr-x  1 root root   98 Dec 17  2016 btrfs

so to make a directory in it I had to be root (or use sudo mkdir)

but the kubuntu directory is owned by me

inny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:/mnt/btrfs$ ls -la                                                                               
total 8                                                                                                                     
drwxr-xr-x 1 root  root    98 Dec 17  2016 .                                                                                
drwxr-xr-x 3 root  root  4096 Mar 19  2016 ..                                                                               
drwxr-xr-x 1 root  root   184 Dec 17  2016 @
drwxr-xr-x 1 root  root    30 Dec 17  2016 @home
drwxr-xr-x 1 vinny vinny  194 Jul 26 22:57 kubuntu
drwxr-xr-x 1 root  root    60 Dec 17  2016 ubiquity-apt-clone
drwxr-xr-x 1 root  root     6 Dec 17  2016 var
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vinny vinny    2 Jan 28  2016 .windows-serial

so I can do what I want in it without root

VINNY

[GeBal]

So what I'm gonna do, I make a folder inside /home, name it Kubuntu and mount my 2nd disk to this folder.
Because as user I owe that, I can do what I want with personal data.

Thanks a lot, Vinny and Rod!

Oh my,I'm a poet too.

GB

[SpecialEd]

So my system got borked today, not really sure what happened. I reinstalled Neon Users Edition, while maintaining my home folder so all in all it was fairly simple (took about 30-45 minutes) and most things are working as they were before. BUT, the symbolic links I made didn't carry over. I made the links again, as Vinny described above but they don't survive a reboot. ?

Also, and I have no idea if these are related but I now have a Loop Device in my device list, see below: