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The home partition holds all user data and settings. When backing up my home partition it contains a lot of data (the settings) I don't need. So I thought I could create a separate data partition and mount it to ~/Data. That would make my backups smaller and the backup process easier because all my important data is on this partition and nothing else. How can I create and mount such a partition. Is it possible to set this up during the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation? Another important thing would be that the places shortcuts in nautilus (documents, music etc.) should point to the directories in my data partition. Is that possible?

Thanks for your time

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    Do you have the available empty space to create the partition?
    – Mitch
    Jun 12, 2013 at 10:10
  • Sure, I am about to do a fresh Ubuntu install on an empty hard drive. Jun 12, 2013 at 11:03
  • You can also only backup the Documents, Photo's, etc. folders instead of your whole home folder.
    – jobukkit
    Jun 12, 2013 at 11:51
  • Yes that would be the simplest solution. But whenever create a new folder in my home directory I would have to change my backup settings. I wanted to avoid that, just in case I forget it. Jun 12, 2013 at 12:45

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Once you boot from CD/DVD, or USB, and get to the installation Screen, choose Something Else.

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And when you get to the screen below, and choose New Partition Table, and just follow the images below. Make sure you divide the space according to your needs /, Swap, /Data, and /Home, etc...

Note: The image below are for instructional purposes, your real life situation maybe different.

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  • Is it possible to set the mount point for the data partition to my home directory e.g. ~/Data and move the folders Documents, Music etc. into it? How can I alter the places shortcuts in Nautilus to point to these new locations? For example the shortcut to Documents should go to ~/Data/Documents Jun 12, 2013 at 12:42
  • @urbaindepuce, you can remove the existing Documents directory, and replace it with a symlink: rmdir Documents && ln -s ~/Data/Documents Documents.
    – psusi
    Jun 12, 2013 at 13:24

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