Move Home from SSD to HDD; Guide? What happened to etc/fstab?

[pwrcul]

rsync -aXS --progress /<PATH TO YOUR BACKUP>/. /home/<YOUR USER>/.

Then to verify:

diff -r /home/<YOUR USER> /<PATH TO YOUR BACKUP

but your restore is only as good as your backup.

Thanks, oshunluvr,

I'd like to hear also from bobbicat, but I will start constructing the rsync command for my situation:

rsync -aXS --progress /FreeAgent Goflex Drive/Tabby5ku14.04Home/. /home/sam/.

Let me be the first to say I do not have confidence in what I just wrote, but we need to start.

[bobbicat]

you'll need double quotes as there are spaces in the file name.

rsync -aXS --progress /"FreeAgent Goflex Drive"/Tabby5ku14.04Home/. /home/sam/.

...give it plenty of time to complete and don't download anything or carry out saves. Ideally don't have anything open on your desktop, just the terminal.

if 'FreeAgent Goflex Drive' isn't found, do nothing, just report that fact here.

[pwrcul]

you'll need double quotes as there are spaces in the file name.

rsync -aXS --progress /"FreeAgent Goflex Drive"/Tabby5ku14.04Home/. /home/sam/.

...give it plenty of time to complete and don't download anything or carry out saves. Ideally don't have anything open on your desktop, just the terminal.

if 'FreeAgent Goflex Drive' isn't found, do nothing, just report that fact here.

Thanks.

Should I delete anything in /home that I added in the meantime before doing the rsync? Like the files in Dropbox and the Dropbox directory?

[bobbicat]

simplest would be to make a folder in /home/sam call it, 00sortmelater, and copy anything like your Dropbox into it, it means you don't need to delete anything and you can get at it later, to deal with as you wish. Then do the copy operation.

If your copy appears to be successful, reboot then let us know how it went.
If you had problems, outline them and we'll see what can be done.

[bobbicat]

In the meantime you started with a question:

Here's my related questions:
How does Dolphin find those partitions without entries in fstab?

A partition can be mounted or unmounted. If it is unmounted it is still possible to be seen but it is largely ignored by the operating system.
So to work with the contents of a partition, generally it needs to be mounted.
By default no partition is mounted. If you want to access it, it will have to be mounted. If you turn off your computer next time it starts the partition will again be unmounted - to use it you will have to go through the process of mounting again.
Obviously there are some partitions one wants to have mounted all the time that the PC is turned on. In order to make or let this happen, a list is made of the placement and set up of those drives that need to be mounted (started up) at boot time.
This handy list is called fstab and is found at /etc/fstab.
So this handy file performs an important function. Unfortunately editing it can create data that is confused and then the computer cannot boot as its instructions have become malformed. Hence all the warnings about messing under the hood and having a backup when doing this sort of thing.
Having said that...
In fact as long as you do have backups of settings and data then having a totally screwed up system that needs to be put right can be an educational experience, probably better than any amount of reading insructions and struggling to understand the abstract.
Show me someone who knows his/her computer and you'll be looking at someone who has, at some time, created absolute havoc and then had to pick their way out of it.
Be brave but also be safe.

[pwrcul]

simplest would be to make a folder in /home/sam call it, 00sortmelater, and copy anything like your Dropbox into it, it means you don't need to delete anything and you can get at it later, to deal with as you wish. Then do the copy operation.

If your copy appears to be successful, reboot then let us know how it went.
If you had problems, outline them and we'll see what can be done.

Here's what I got back in the terminal:
sending incremental file list
rsync: change_dir "/FreeAgent Goflex Drive/Tabby5ku14.04Home" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1183) [sender=3.1.0]

I see I failed to capitalize the "k" in Tabby5ku14.04Home
I will try again, shutting down Dolphin, FF in the meantime and just using the terminal.

[oshunluvr]

Having other stuff in the target directory shouldn't cause rsync any problem unless the names are the same. Safer not to have them there and generally safer to not muck about when you're doing something as potentially destructive as move /home about.

An alternate to the quotes is to "escape" the spaces using backslash like this:

rsync -aXS --progress /FreeAgent\ Goflex\ Drive/Tabby5ku14.04Home/. /home/sam/.

[pwrcul]

I corrected all the capitalizations/mixed case but still get the same error from rsynch

rsync: change_dir "/FreeAgent GoFlex Drive/Tabby5Ku14.04Home" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1183) [sender=3.1.0]

Is there a way to probe for the right name to use other than eyeballing Dolphin?

[oshunluvr]

I find it hard to believe your backup is mounted at:

/FreeAgent Goflex Drive/Tabby5Ku14.04Home

Are you sure it's not at /media/sam//FreeAgent Goflex Drive/Tabby5Ku14.04Home ?

In a terminal; mount |grep Tabby will show you the full path

[pwrcul]

Having other stuff in the target directory shouldn't cause rsync any problem unless the names are the same. Safer not to have them there and generally safer to not muck about when you're doing something as potentially destructive as move /home about.

An alternate to the quotes is to "escape" the spaces using backslash like this:

rsync -aXS --progress /FreeAgent\ Goflex\ Drive/Tabby5ku14.04Home/. /home/sam/.

I will try that form and see....

[pwrcul]

I will try the /media/sam//"FreeAgent GoFlex Drive"/Tabby5Ku14.04Home/. /home/sam/. first before escaping instead of quotes

[pwrcul]

Wow, mozilla's cache has a lot of stuff!

It may take a good long time.
I am writing this on the old netbook.

[pwrcul]

Unfortunately, when I rebooted I don't see any of all that stuff I thought was being copied back.

I have the generic Kubuntu 14.04 wallpaper etc.
The directories whose contents I saw being moved are empty or non-existent, etc.

Where might it have gone?

[oshunluvr]

what's the output of ls -a ~/

[pwrcul]

what's the output of ls -a ~/

Let me preface this by saying things got weird with the screen/desktop so I restarted than gave the command.
Is it possible I lost something temporary that would have been important?

Here's what I get:
. .bash_history Documents .gtkrc-2.0 .mozilla .thumbnails
.. .cache Downloads sam Music Videos
00sortmelater .config .dropbox .kde Pictures .Xauthority
.adobe Desktop .dropbox-dist .local Public .xsession-errors
.AMD .directory .gconf .macromedia Templates .xsession-errors.old