Ubuntu – Moving home/user directory to another drive

home-directoryssdstorage

I'm installing a SSD and to save space I want to move my user folder to another drive, is there a way to do that?

Best Answer

  • From Terminal type this:

    sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/tmp

    which will allow you to temporarily mount the new partition, assuming /sdb1 as new partition for HOME.

    sudo rsync -avx /home/ /mnt/tmp

    This will copy HOME to new location.

    sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /home

    This will mount the new partition as HOME and make sure all data is present.

    sudo umount /home

    This will unmount the new partion.

    rm -rf /home/*

    This deletes the old HOME.

    To make HOME permanent you need to know the UUID of the new partition for the fstab entry. you can get that by giving command:

    sudo blkid

    Note down the UUID and use the same to change fstab .

    sudo nano /etc/fstab

    Now add the following at the end.

    UUID=<noted number from above>    /home    ext4    defaults   0  2

    NOTE: You need to select the exact file system that was formatted (for example ext4 as chosen here).

    Now you can restart your computer to see the new HOME.

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