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I'm going to move from HDD to SSD (60GB) + HDD (250GB) setup. Basicly I want the system to be fast. Root partition will be on SSD but I'm not sure what to do with /home. All data like /pictures /documents will be linked to HDD that will be in a removable caddy adapter in my thinkpad. From time to time I might need to remove it and plug in a CD-ROM. This way I guess some part of /home partition will have to be on SSD to make the system bootable.

Does anyone has some tips? It's also important that the Eclipse and Browsers (Opera,Firefox) will run fast. Is it also enough to just copy the partition to SSD to I will have to make a clean install?

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I think I would put the /home directory on the SSD, but for most directories, especially the ones with large files, I would simply have a symbolic link to whatever contains the files.

This way, you can keep your settings, and the browser cache, etc on the SSD, but put the pictures, sounds, documents, etc on whatever disk you want, which can easily be changed by changing the links.

To do a backup, you can usually choose to follow symbolic links if desired. I use sbackup (simple backup), and have separate profiles for major directories, and so each profile can choose whether to follow symbolic links or not.

Edit: By the way, a slightly more complex and harder to maintain, but possibly easier to use method (in that you don't have to pay attention to where programs save files by default) would be to mount the various documents or media folders or partitions in the /home subdirectories, so that programs that automatically want to save pictures in /home/Pictures will save them there, but they will get saved to the external location.

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  • Simple, easy, fast solution. Perfect!
    – Caco
    Jan 7, 2022 at 0:07
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@Marty Fried Having the /home directory on the SSD is a bad idea because you want to avoid any unnecessary writes to the SSD which will add wear and tear to the SSD and shorten it's life.

It is best to have your /home folder on the HDD for things that are read/write heavy like documents, music, etc. and leave the SSD for the OS and Applications.

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  • I missed this when it was posted... but if anyone reads this and wonders about it, two things: one, I don't put most of the data for the home directory on the SSD, just the directory. Most of the data is links or shortcuts to a bigger HD. And two, I do put the configuration files on the SSD, but they don't change that much. I'm still using the SSD I bought years ago, and haven't had any problems
    – Marty Fried
    Jan 8, 2022 at 1:08
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As far as moving /home to a new partition (or drive), these instructions worked great for me! Make sure you read them through first so you understand what you're doing before you start, and be careful to follow them exactly. (Well, these sorts of things scare me; I'm afraid of making a typo that'll trash everything, but maybe that's just me.) But I did it on two computers, and everything worked completely without errors.

I'd post the whole thing here, but it's probably too long for that, and the people who wrote it deserve the credit for it.

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I'd suggest a /boot partition + a single bcache partition. See How do I install and use flashcache/bcache to cache HDD to SSD? for installing or converting.

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