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I'm new to unity and trying to harmonize my dual boot between windows and ubuntu by setting the documents, pictures, videos, etc folders onto a storage partition, instead of in the home folder. I added this line to my fstab

# storage mount
UUID=66E53AEC54455DB2 /media/storage/    ntfs-3g        auto,user,rw 0 0

Rebooted, then went to configure my subfolders like this:

# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
# 
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="/media/storage/Downloads"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="/media/storage/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="/media/storage/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="/media/storage/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="/media/storage/Videos"

Rebooted again, but this didn't do the trick. I can get to media/storage/Documents from the filesystem, but when I go to documents under places, it's still located on the wrong dirve. nothing I save appears on the storage partitition unless i directly put it there, and nothing i put in the storage partition appears in the documents folder under places.

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    Why not just add links to your files? First remove the Documents folder from your home folder, then run ln -s /media/storage/Documents /home/username/. This will create a link to the Documents folder on /media/storage and it should behave as you want it to. (I've never tried this on an NTFS drive though, so it might not work. But it's worth a shot, I'd say.) Nov 8, 2011 at 21:41
  • Why is this question tagged dual and boot? Combine them into one tag, dual boot.
    – William
    Nov 8, 2011 at 21:46

3 Answers 3

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During Ubuntu setup you can change the mount longs of folders. Backup all information on your Ubuntu partition, and boot to the install disc. When prompted for where to put Ubuntu, choose "Something Else" to bring up the advanced partition editor. Set the mount point for / where your current ubuntu install is. Then select the storage drive and set the mount point to /home/username/Documents, /home/username/Pictures, etc, replacing username with your username.

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I followed the steps below to install /home in another NTFS partition and it has been working well for a month.

I have an NTFS partition for Windows Data (/sda6 in my case, but you must use your own partition's name). Note that this partition must not contain the Windows OS, and you must have ntfs-3g installed.

I mounted this partition in /media (but you can use /mnt if you prefer):

sudo mkdir /media/whome sudo mount /dev/sda6 /media/whome

Next, I copied the directory /home to the directory /media/whome (using cpio instead of cp):

cd /home/ sudo find . -depth -print0 | cpio --null --sparse -pvd /media/whome/

Next, I unmounted the partition:

sudo umount /media/whome

Now, to avoid keeping the old home in backup folder:

sudo mv /home /respaldo

Now, mount the new /home partition:

sudo mkdir /home sudo mount /dev/sda6 /home

Now the most important step, to mount this partition every time the system boots:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bk ##(security backup) 
sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add this line at the end:

/dev/sda6 /home ntfs nodev,nosuid 0 2
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Check permissions on folder /media/storage/Documents. Your user should be set as the proprietary for the folder.

I'm not sure if this type of permissions can be set for NTFS partitions contents. If not, try using ext2 filesystem for the storage partitions, which is now supported by Win7.

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