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My first question here.

I'm relatively new to Linux. Pretty much I've been using Windows since 95 release, so I'm a bit confused as you may have guessed. It's not really Ubuntu-specific question (well it kinda is), but I believe that this question belongs here.

So, on Windows I would simply make a 180GB C:/ partition from my SSD and then I'd make ~500GB D:/ partition for Games/Music and ~1TB E:/ partition for programming/game development/drawing etc.

On Linux I figured out that I could use SSD for system (/ mount point) and swap (I heard that it's recommended that swap size is 1.5 or 2 times as much as RAM, so I've spent 32GB of SSD for swap) and my HDD for my own files (/home mount point).

So far everything works fine, but I've found one weird problem:

  • I can't resize my /home partition with free space I have available on my HDD. I simply boot up Ubuntu live cd, run gparted and there I can only shrink this partition.

It's weird, because I have ~hundred GB of free space on this HDD, but that's optional part of this question and if somebody could answer it I'd be grateful, but it's not necessary.

My real question is as in the title: Can I use such setup as I described or could mixing up SSD and HDD or having swap on SSD cause any problems in future?

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.

As requested, here is output from sudo parted -l:

Model: ATA ST1500DM003-9YN1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start  End     Size   Type      File system  Flags
3      107GB  760GB   652GB  primary    ntfs
1      760GB  1500GB  740GB  extended                boot
5      760GB  1500GB  740GB  logical    ext4


Model: ATA INTEL SSDSC2BW18 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 180GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
1      1049kB  32,8GB  32,8GB  primary
2      32,8GB  180GB   147GB   extended
5      32,8GB  180GB   147GB   logical    ext4
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  • Could you append the output of the command sudo parted -l to your question? If you google 'ubuntu ssd best practices' you will find a lot of information to help guide you through setting partitions in a rational matter for your ssd/hdd installation.
    – Charles Green
    Jul 6, 2014 at 14:25
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    The rule swap = 2xRAM was good when most people had 512 MB of RAM. If you have 16 GB, better is to have something about 1 GB. Also, it is bad for your SSD to have swap on it. Better place it on your HDD. Also, I see that you can't resize your /home partition because there isn't any space left.
    – enedil
    Jul 6, 2014 at 15:01
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    According to parted, you have an NTFS partition that begins at 106GB, so the free space is at the start of your disk and the ext4 partition is at the end. GParted would have shown you as much. I second the recommendation to keep swap on the HDD instead of the SSD. 32 GB of swap is a waste unless you have a need of 16+GB memory (heavy compilation? number crunching?).
    – muru
    Jul 6, 2014 at 15:03
  • Little swap on hdd, '/home' on hdd, '/' on sdd - yes, go for this. I have it on Ubuntu 14.04 without problems. I have also '/var' and '/tmp' on hdd.
    – Ruslan Gerasimov
    Jul 7, 2014 at 1:32

1 Answer 1

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Having your system / on SSD and your /home on an HDD is not a problem. I and many others have a setup like this, and it works fine. It allows your system to boot, run, and update quickly using the SSD while allowing you to store much more personal data on the /home using the HDD. More generally, separate / and /home lets you overwrite / with a new installation while not touching the user data on /home/.

As others have commented, having swap on an SSD is less advised. This can require lots of writes to the disk, which may reduce the usable life of the SSD. Also as commented, you probably don't need 32 GB of swap. If you have more than 4 GB of RAM, unless you are doing things that use a bunch of memory, a few GB of swap should be plenty.

Regarding resizing the /home partition, you can't resize it while it is mounted. Running a live CD without the partitions mounted allows you to modify them, as you have mentioned. And as others have commented, your parted output does not show any free space on your HDD.

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