Ubuntu – How to combine an SSD boot drive with a HDD data drive?

partitioningssdsystem-installation

I have an SSD with 64 GB and a 6 GB/s 1 Terabyte hard drive. I want to use the SSD only as a boot device and maybe for swap storage. On the 1 Terabyte hard drive, I want to have the main file system. As in Windows, I liked to have at least 2-3 Partitions example for music games programs and so on.

Which partition layout do you recommend to me?

Best Answer

64GB is more than enough for a root filesystem, a default installation will probably occupy about 3GB. When installing Ubuntu, choose for a custom partitioning scheme:

  • Put a partition on your SSD with mount point /
  • On your 1 TB data disk, create a partition with /home

Variations are possible. You can store all your settings and documents on the SSD and store large files like music and video on the 1TB disk:

  • Install Ubuntu to /
  • Create some partitions on your 1 TB disk, and mount those on /media/DESIRED-PARTITION-NAME.

Some folders in your home folder may become too large for the SSD, like ~/.wine. In that case, create a partition (or folder) on your 1 TB disk named "DATA" (with /media/DATA as mount point). Then, move the ~/.wine folder to the data partition:

mv ~/.wine /media/DATA/wine

If you've just installed the system and the folder did not exist yet, just create the empty folder:

mkdir /media/DATA/wine

Next, create a symbolic link from your home directory to the wine folder on the big disk:

ln -s /media/DATA/wine ~/.wine

The latter can also be performed after installation of Ubuntu to the SSD. Use GParted to create partitions on the 1 TB disk.

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