How to combine an SSD boot drive with a HDD data drive?
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.
Related SSD questions:
- Is a 40GB SSD practical to use for ' / '
- What is the recommended way to empty a SSD?
Do not put swap on the ssd. Put it on the hdd. Some pointers about swap and ssd: Installing Ubuntu on a SSD
Do make sure you enable trim
on the SSD: How to enable TRIM?
My personal layout that works best for me:
/
20 Gb (sda1) (is on a 120 Gb ssd); gets formatted every time I re-install.swap
4 Gb (sdb1)./home
15 Gb. (sdb2) Holds only settings, no userfiles. I remove all directories after install andsymlink
them to/discword/
; gets formatted every time I re-install. After format I recreate the symlinks and press F5 on my desktop to get all my video files back I had on my desktop./discworld
(sdb3) is my data partition. Has a/discword/Downloads/
and/discworld/Desktop/
etc. Never gets formatted./disworld2/
(sda2) is the 100 Gb remainder of my SSD. Unused; never gets formatted.
You can set this up during installation with the something else
option (i.e. manual partitioning).