What's a good partition method to combine an SSD boot drive with a 1TB data drive?

Question

i actually want to switch to ubuntu, but i'm afraid that i cant use my harddrives as i want.

I have a SSD with 64gb and a 6gb/s 1 Terabyte harddrive.

I want to use the ssd only as a boot device and maybe for swap storage!?

On the 1 Terabyte harddrive i want ot have the main file system. But as in windows i liked to have at least 2-3 Partitions example for music games programs and so on.

Which partition layout do you recommend me?

Answer 1

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 mountpoint /
• On your 1 TB data disk, create a partition with /home

Variantions 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?

Answer 2

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 and symlink 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).