How do i add another HDD as my Home dir.

[Joe Jackman]

I have my SSD that is shirked to run linux and windows (dual boot), and a part of a ext HDD as my home dir. Ik i thought i really wouldn't use linux for long but i began to love it and its my daily driver now.
So bought a HDD for it. IF it isnt possible, suggest me a way to best use this hardware.  TIA

[Jimkirk363]

@Joe Jackman  I dont quite understand what u r trying to do here but im gonna take a guess.  I think what u wanna do is add extra space to your linux drive and if this is the case its not as easy as just doing that.  You need to install the O/S to that drive.

[Eigenvektor]

24 minutes ago, Jimkirk363 said:

@Joe Jackman  I dont quite understand what u r trying to do here but im gonna take a guess.  I think what u wanna do is add extra space to your linux drive and if this is the case its not as easy as just doing that.  You need to install the O/S to that drive.

No, you don't. You can add a new drive, move your files over and then mount that as your new "/home/<username>". I've done exactly that on mine. My original installation was Linux on a 75 GB partition. I later added a 1 TB SSD and I am now using that as my home directory.

 

See here, for example: https://www.tecmint.com/move-home-directory-to-new-partition-disk-in-linux/

[Joe Jackman]

4 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

No, you don't. You can add a new drive, move your files over and then mount that as your new "/home/<username>". I've done exactly that on mine. My original installation was Linux on a 75 GB partition. I later added a 1 TB SSD and I am now using that as my home directory.

 

See here, for example: https://www.tecmint.com/move-home-directory-to-new-partition-disk-in-linux/

also another question, can i only have my Boot efi partition on the SSD (i think that is responsible for the fast boot time) and have my root partition be on the HDD there ase well? 

also i meant that i dual boot windows and linux from the same SSD and have root, boot efi, swap and recovery partition on the SSD. A part of a external HDD is my home dir.

[Eigenvektor]

26 minutes ago, Joe Jackman said:

also another question, can i only have my Boot efi partition on the SSD (i think that is responsible for the fast boot time) and have my root partition be on the HDD there ase well?

Sure, but that is probably a bit harder to do with an existing installation. Moving directories that contain your running system isn't as easy as moving your home-directory. You could probably do it when booting e.g. from a live-USB, but I'd definitely create a backup beforehand.

 

I'd try to keep everything on the SSD, except /home and maybe /var. At the very least, I'd keep the kernel and system applications on the SSD.

 

If you wanted to, you could put every directory onto another disk or partition. And if you used LVM you could even have one directory span multiple drives and increase their size on the fly when you add new drives. It's just a bit more hassle to set up initially.

 

26 minutes ago, Joe Jackman said:

also i meant that i dual boot windows and linux from the same SSD and have root, boot efi, swap and recovery partition on the SSD. A part of a external HDD is my home dir.

I also dual-boot Windows and Linux from an SSD (512 GB), from which Linux initially got 75 GB. I later added a 1 TB SSD, which currently houses my /home directory.

[Joe Jackman]

13 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Sure, but that is probably a bit harder to do with an existing installation. Moving directories that contain your running system isn't as easy as moving your home-directory. You could probably do it when booting e.g. from a live-USB, but I'd definitely create a backup beforehand.

 

I'd try to keep everything on the SSD, except /home and maybe /var. At the very least, I'd keep the kernel and system applications on the SSD.

 

If you wanted to, you could put every directory onto another disk or partition. And if you used LVM you could even have one directory span multiple drives and increase their size on the fly when you add new drives. It's just a bit more hassle to set up initially.

 

I also dual-boot Windows and Linux from an SSD (512 GB), from which Linux initially got 75 GB. I later added a 1 TB SSD, which currently houses my /home directory.

(i am very sorry for the late replies but i live on a different continent, so timezones- you know)
i nvr heard of LVM so ig i dont have it Xd.
OKay so ig in the future i can buy another SSD for linux- so let me not worry about future proofing just yet.
Could i install Games (ig lutris is the only one for now) on /home ? like i think i can caz it prompts me to select a disk but i haven't tried.
And also could you suggest me what to use for my backup? i am literally 4-5 months into the linux world and i am loving how it works and home much focused and streamlined things are.

 

[Eigenvektor]

2 hours ago, Joe Jackman said:

i nvr heard of LVM so ig i dont have it Xd.

Every modern Linux supports LVM, but you need to set it up during installation. So if you don't know, you probably did not An easy test to do would be "df -h", which shows your file systems. If you see entries similar to

/dev/mapper/pihole--vg-root   28G  4.2G   22G  17% /
/dev/mapper/pihole--vg-home  198G  219M  188G   1% /home

then you have set up LVM. Obviously the names of the volume groups can be different, but you should see entries that start with /dev/mapper.

 

2 hours ago, Joe Jackman said:

Could i install Games (ig lutris is the only one for now) on /home ? like i think i can caz it prompts me to select a disk but i haven't tried.

Most software will be installed in /bin, /sbin or /usr/bin, you can't really change that. However Steam games for example will be installed in

/home/<user>/.steam/steam/steamapps/common

So if your home directory is on the HDD, the game is on the HDD as well. I haven't used Lutris myself, but from what I can see it lets you choose an installation directory, so if you choose your home directory it should be fine.

 

2 hours ago, Joe Jackman said:

And also could you suggest me what to use for my backup? i am literally 4-5 months into the linux world and i am loving how it works and home much focused and streamlined things are.

There are a few possibilities. I've used rsnapshot in the past and it has worked quite well. I've been meaning to try borg, but haven't really gotten around to it yet. There's also restic and Bareos. Here's a simple tutorial for rsnapshot: https://workaround.org/rsnapshot-and-usb-drives/

 

If you want something with a UI, Ubuntu has a list of backup tools that includes some with a graphical interface: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem

[Joe Jackman]

9 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Every modern Linux supports LVM, but you need to set it up during installation. So if you don't know, you probably did not An easy test to do would be "df -h", which shows your file systems. If you see entries similar to

This is what i get but ig i do have LVM as u mentioned.

 

9 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Most software will be installed in /bin, /sbin or /usr/bin, you can't really change that.

that is my root ig. and i dont think i be using much of it.
so i made my mind-

i'll jus add the HDD as my extended home/dir (can i shift it however?, its on ext HDD so i cant really remove it as a ext) and then back it up.

[Joe Jackman]

On 10/24/2020 at 2:54 PM, Eigenvektor said:

You can add a new drive, move your files over and then mount that as your new "/home/<username>".

IT worked, thank you so much.
one final question, can i rsync to back up stuff? what about root?