I think I would put the /home directory on the SSD, but for most directories, especially the ones with large files, I would simply have a symbolic link to whatever contains the files.
This way, you can keep your settings, and the browser cache, etc on the SSD, but put the pictures, sounds, documents, etc on whatever disk you want, which can easily be changed by changing the links.
To do a backup, you can usually choose to follow symbolic links if desired. I use sbackup (simple backup), and have separate profiles for major directories, and so each profile can choose whether to follow symbolic links or not.
Edit:
By the way, a slightly more complex and harder to maintain, but possibly easier to use method (in that you don't have to pay attention to where programs save files by default) would be to mount the various documents or media folders or partitions in the /home subdirectories, so that programs that automatically want to save pictures in /home/Pictures will save them there, but they will get saved to the external location.
I think your plan is OK but while you are at it, why don't you put the /var on a Logical Volume too instead of a separate partiton on your new drive? I find lvm a lot more flexible than regular partitions. My main machine is all using lvm, including / without any problem and very quick to resize/reconfigure Logical Volumes.
To use your current HD with lvm, you'll need to empty and format it. One way to do that is to put the new drive as a device in the Volume Group, move your current home to it, format the current HD and add it to the VG.
Best Answer
It's really up to you. You can do almost anything.
I have (to show off):
/media/ned)/media/jeff)Popular mounting convention would have me store the entire
/home/onned... But this would slow down a lot of applications that use things in~to run (eg Firefox has a SQLite database that works best on a fast disk).Per that convention, I used to keep the entire
/home/onjeff.mdadm's RAID1 is considerably faster than its RAID5 but tons slower than my SSD. When half ofjeffdied, I decided I wanted more speed.So now I just keep a directory on
nedfor things I really don't want on the SSD. This includes my~/Music~/Documents, etc. You canmount bindthem in yourfstabbut I've just gone with SymLinks. Move the directory and run something like:Rinse and repeat.
I my case, it's really a case of how much I can stand to lose if the worst happens. I have some security with RAID5 so anything not on it (especially the RAID0 SSD) is much more liable to die if a squirrel farts in its direction.
As you've only got a relatively tiny SSD and only one data disk, the metrics and causalities are slightly different. Each method is equally unsafe and you're limited by space. You might do best to mount all of home on the data disk and do the reverse of what I'm doing. Create a directory on the SSD for the things you want to be fast and SymLink them back out onto the data partition.
You can use fstab-mount commands but I just find SymLinks easier to maintain. I'm not sure what the performance overhead differences are like but I'm fairly sure I've asked somewhere.