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My boot drive is a 1TB drive and is working fine. Another 1TB drive is acting a bit flaky so I want to move some data (200GB) from my flaky drive to a folder on my boot drive (900GB free on my boot drive).

Using the Unity DE, I click on "Computer" on the left and I see lots of folders but I am unable to create a new folder here. I tried the File menu but New Folder is disabled.

I can create folders under my profile but this is data I would prefer not be under my profile.

Is there a way to add folders on the boot drive without those folders being under my home directory? If there is not, must I re-partition my boot drive to be able to use all of the empty space?

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That's because you're not root when you browse your files by default (for obvious security reasons).

You can run gksu nautilus to launch nautilus as root

What I did is adding a shortcut to launch this :

  1. Open System Settings and go to Keyboard ;
  2. Under Shortcut > Custom Shortcuts click the + (add) button ;
  3. Name the shortcut as you like and fill the above command (gksu nautilus), then click Apply button ;
  4. Click on Disabled next to the new shortcut and pick key combination of your choosing.

It will prompt for your password every time you open this.

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  • One more question that is directly related to this solution. When I do this, it removed my desktop background as soon as I entered my password. When I closed the window, it did not put my background back. Any way to avoid this side-effect?
    – John
    Jun 13, 2017 at 11:51
  • Hmmm, I haven't experienced this side-effect... Was it back after reboot? And if so, does it happen again when open re-open Nautilus as root?
    – N. Cornet
    Jun 13, 2017 at 19:19
  • The background did return after reboot (but not after logout). Each time I use the hotkey ( Ctrl + \ ) it removes my background. At least it's repeatable (on my machine - 16.04)
    – John
    Jun 14, 2017 at 3:55
  • Try using a different shortcut, maybe this one do something else in addition... (Or does it happen even when you run the command from the terminal ?)
    – N. Cornet
    Jun 14, 2017 at 9:45
  • It happens even when I run from the terminal.
    – John
    Jun 14, 2017 at 12:02

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