/home question and external USB Hard disks

Support & Help Requests
1

I recently acquired a new (to me) computer. It's an all in one ECS G24. It has a i7 CPU and 16GB RAM. My only issue is that it has just a 120GB hard disk. While I have opened all in ones before, this one doesn't look easy. So for the meantime I will have access my external USB Hard disks to access my stored data. I have less than 100GB space left on the internal disk. Something I am looking into is the PC has a bay for a hard disk right on the PC. I have ordered a multi-terabyte 2.5" disk for that. Do you think that removable drive will be recognized as an internal disk? I'm hoping so. So after I buy that new disk, I will need to move /home to that.

ECS G24 is the world’s first All-in-One PC with a hot swap bay on the right side of the display. Users can easily switch optical drive device to 2.5” portable hard disk and grab data to go whenever needed.

My question is that I know it will not be ideal (I am prepared to have some slowdown accessing them), I would like to know if I can take one of my external drives and point /home to it. So that when I am in caja, If I click on the pictures, documents, etc locations, that it will take me to the external drive rather than the internal drive.

I have already installed Ubuntu MATE on the new pc. Maybe I will have to redo the installation with the external disk connected. I am hoping that I can make that my /home after the fact.

Thanks in advance!

2

specs at https://www.ecs.com.tw/en/Product/System/G24/specification

1 Like
3

I found some instructions on ask Ubuntu. I will try them. (so I think I will wait until I install the second disk then move home)

4

would it be easier to reinstall and choose that 2nd disk to be /home? How is that done?

5

Hello mickee

I suggest you read the following guide - from start to finish - twice:
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/install-ubuntu-mate-using-the-something-else-method/651

Make sure you understand what you will be doing, before you get going. And don't forget your backups...

3 Likes
6

Don't know if this would apply to removable drive may have some ideas you might be able to use

https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/home-question-and-external-usb-hard-disks/26219/3

7

If you're only wanting to move /home/, I'd not re-install, but boot live media & just copy /home/ from the smaller drive to your newer drive.

To use the newer drive with your existing install, whilst still using the live media, alter your systems file-system table (ie. /etc/fstab) to point to the new location on the other drive. (use the existing mount for / as a guide, with UUID for the newer drive grabbed from blkid or whatever tool you like). Then I'd boot it normally & check out it's all okay. I'd likely check it out for a few days before I did the next step.

If/when you're convinced it's all okay, then you can boot live media again, and erase the old /home/ on the initial disk (it's outdated now, having been replaced by the data on the newer drive), and finally re-gain the space back on that smaller drive.

If it's a new install though, ie. you didn't move data across from an older machine.. I'd opt to just re-install myself too (it's just simpler).

( this is overview of what I'd likely do, not intended to be detailed instructions )

4 Likes