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How can I bring my files and games from Windows to Linux? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by to c/technology@hexbear.net
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Finally ready to switch my final windows device over to linux, but I'm running into a problem. NTFS drives aren't a good idea under Linux, but my 4 NTFS drives are this full. I own zero extra hard drives, and do not want to spend $300 on another one.

How can I bring these files into Bazzite WITHOUT just wiping everything and re-downloading 10+ terabytes of movies, shows, music, games, and other data I refuse to delete?

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[–] 6 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

RE: partioning.

I strongly recommend that users set up separate partitions for home and root. I use LVM and it's awesome for snapshot reasons, but I think btrfs does everything and is easier to set up for a new user?

My setup atm (8 year old install, many partitions inherited as far back as 2004):

root: 80G (LaTeX lol) homes: 216G (user files, stuff installed only for me etc) media: 364G games: 541G mail: 20G (I host my own email and download to my computer) archive: 11T (long term storage on rust)

That way if I want to e.g. backup just my user files and not all my legitimately obtained and licensed movies I can just backup homes and not chase down files. Or if I want to install a different OS or fix a broken one I only need to look at root.

Start them small and extend them as needed. You don't have to plan in advance!

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Wow this sounds like a great setup

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago

    the mount points are

    • root: /
    • homes: /home
    • media: /srv/media (if not sharing on network then /var/share is a more sane place, if only for one user then /home/username/media or something
    • games: /opt/games
    • mail: /home/myusername/mail
    • archive: /srv/archive
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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    I strongly recommend that users set up separate partitions for home and root.

    This is a very good idea (and my personal practice). It allows you to replace the OS without touching your personal files. Only reason I didn't suggest it is it looked like available space was already very limited.

    but I think btrfs does everything and is easier to set up for a new user?

    It is certainly possible to use Btrfs subvolumes instead of a separate partition, but many Linux distro GUI installers do not have robust support for this and will prevent you from using the same partition for different mountpoints (they typically don't understand or provide a way to set the btrfs-specific subvol= mount option). On a manual distribution like Arch or Gentoo this isn't a problem at all, but I've had to get creative when using GUI installers for Debian and Solus. Fedora's GUI installer "supports" it, but last time I did it, it triggered another bug in the process later on based on a similar assumption.

    It is easy enough to do post-install (turning /home into a subvolume and adding it to fstab), but you will still have a hard time later on replacing only the OS, which is the main point of setting things up like this.

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