Hey folks. I recently got an old X220 with an mSATA SSD. I plan to to install Linux on there. It doesnt matter which OS: Debian, Ubuntu or Arch. The machine is so old that all distros play nice with it.

Anyway, the speed on the mSATA is slower than the 2.5 SSD. So I want to know if is it possible to have your /boot, /efi, swap on the mSATA. Then, the /home on the 2.5 SSD? Any problems with this setup and if anyone tried it before?

Now, for the reasons why I use mSATA instead of just putting Linux on 2.5 SSD:

  1. the mSATA is Samsung, pretty rare nowadays. The health is still very excellent. I checked with CrystalDiskInfo. So might as well use it.

  2. My X220 has a problem finding out grub if installed on the 2.5 SSD. It’s literally a 50/50 chance it can find grub properly. So:

a) you installed Linux on 2.5 SSD, reboot.

b) grub error screen

c) restart

d) boot into Linux well

Note at d) if I do anything to restart/shutdown the computer, you are back at step b) and require another reboot to reach Linux.

Any advice is welcome.

  • Shimitar@downonthestreet.euEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    Ha, home has been traditionally always on a separate drive. That’s the reason why root user has the home under /root and not /home/root, so that it can login even if the home drive didn’t Mount.

    As a curiosity, even /usr was traditionally on a separate drive and that’s why critical binaries and libraries where under /bin and /lib while all non critical stuff under /usr. It is called “split-usr”.

    Nowadays /usr is always on the same drive as root, and we moved to a “merge-usr” approach where stuff under /lib and /bin is a symlink into /usr/lib and /usr/bin.

    Because when HDDs where 50mb in size, even that small binary file counted as big :)

  • nous@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    There is no problem with having home on a different disk. But why do you want swap on the slower disk? These would benefit from being on the faster disks. Same with all the system binaries.

    Personally I would put as much as possible on the faster disk and mount the slower somewhere that the speed matters less. Like for photos/videos in your home dir.

    /boot can be anywhere though if you are getting a grub error that suggests the UEFI firmware is finding grubs first stage but grub is having issues after that. Personally I don’t use grub anymore, systemd-boot is far simpler as it does not need to deal with legacy MBR booting.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    Mounting /home on a different device is common, shouldn’t be a problem. Universities used to mount you’re home dir off the network with nfs so that it followed you to any system you logged in to.

  • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
    0·
    1 day ago

    I believe that the only FS that absolutely need to be on the root partition are /etc and /var. The rest can be anywhere else with various degrees of tinkering. For /home to be moved, you should just need to edit your fstab (or your systemd mounts, depending on your distro).