Multiple drive partitioning in Linux

Mo5 · June 22, 2022

I have a pc with 2 SSDs (1TB and 500GB) and a 4TB HDD - currently dual booting Windows and Manjaro from said SSDs. I plan on moving Linux only (maybe have a cheeky Windows VM if i really bother) in the future but have /home on a separate drive. Anyone has suggestions if I should put the home directory on the 500 or 1tb ssd or just any tips on how to better parition 2 drives for linux.

cretsiah · June 22, 2022

probably depends more on your use case to be honest......

for instance i have an MBR triple boot system

drive 1 500GB SSD: ( internal )

Set MBR mode 4 partitions:

- Win 7 sp1 ( NTFS )

- win 10 v 2004 ( NTFS )

- Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 root partition ( EXT4 )

- some spare space ( not formatted yet )

drive 2 1 TB HDD: ( internal )

- GPT, NTFS windows 7 and 10 data drop zone

drive 3 1TB HDD: ( internal )

- GPT NTFS windows 10 data drop / install zone

drive 4 4TB HDD: ( external usb drive )

- GPT EXT4 /home for Linux Mint Debian Edition 5

- where i put all my games

but thats just my layout

Ralphred · June 22, 2022

1 hour ago, Mo5 said:

Anyone has suggestions if I should put the home directory on the 500 or 1tb ssd

Lots of config files and cached files exist in /home/[user] that benefit from being on your ssd, so it's better to have /home there.

But linux gives you better tools for managing storage space, so you can make things like ~/Documents ~/Games ~/Videos ~/Downloads all symlinks to various storage spaces.

Personally, i'd make / ~200gig, then mount the rest of the sdd, the other ssd and the hdd (and any other drives) as /mnt/storage_{1,2 ... n}, but you could use LVM and make two storage locations, one using SSD partitions and one using HDD partitions, if you wanted. I only use LVM for long term storage, films, TV shows and the like, but that's because I have many small drives on a system that's ~20 years old, and LVM makes upgrades/replacements simpler.