Is it ok to split home on another drive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey folks. I recently got an old X220 with an mSATA SSD. I plan to to install Linux on there. It doesnt matter which OS: Debian, Ubuntu or Arch. The machine is so old that all distros play nice with it.

Anyway, the speed on the mSATA is slower than the 2.5 SSD. So I want to know if is it possible to have your /boot, /efi, swap on the mSATA. Then, the /home on the 2.5 SSD? Any problems with this setup and if anyone tried it before?

Now, for the reasons why I use mSATA instead of just putting Linux on 2.5 SSD:

the mSATA is Samsung, pretty rare nowadays. The health is still very excellent. I checked with CrystalDiskInfo. So might as well use it.
My X220 has a problem finding out grub if installed on the 2.5 SSD. It's literally a 50/50 chance it can find grub properly. So:

a) you installed Linux on 2.5 SSD, reboot.

b) grub error screen

c) restart

d) boot into Linux well

Note at d) if I do anything to restart/shutdown the computer, you are back at step b) and require another reboot to reach Linux.

Any advice is welcome.

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[-] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago

Ha, home has been traditionally always on a separate drive. That's the reason why root user has the home under /root and not /home/root, so that it can login even if the home drive didn't Mount.

As a curiosity, even /usr was traditionally on a separate drive and that's why critical binaries and libraries where under /bin and /lib while all non critical stuff under /usr. It is called "split-usr".

Nowadays /usr is always on the same drive as root, and we moved to a "merge-usr" approach where stuff under /lib and /bin is a symlink into /usr/lib and /usr/bin.

Because when HDDs where 50mb in size, even that small binary file counted as big :)

this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025

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