This is probably a piece of cake for many linux people but id like to change my current home directory to another internal drive while also copying the current one over to it.
would it be better to give said home directory its own partition on the second drive? or would it be better to keep it one single big partition?
i most likely will stay on endeavouros however if i feel the need to change to a distro that wouldnt be arch based, unlike some pacman apps that surely will be in the directory would keeping the same home directory cause any additional problem?
I would like to know what the purpose is for this proposed change. There may be a better way of getting the result you want.
For instance, it you just want to separate out your data, and you might want access to it from another distro later on, a better move could be to move only the normal data directories over, and then access them from their current location.
If this is your intent - I would be happy to walk you through the steps required - this is the way I have my systems organized - and no matter what distro I use, the data is accessible, and unaffected by the change.
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there isnt really a need for it actually, its more just thinking that if the entire directory would be on another drive it might make potential distro changes easier by not having to backup some apps all the time.
so while im not sure if just separating my data would have the same effect it would be very educational to still see what these steps would be, thank you in advance.
Most apps are not in the /home directory - so there would be little effect there. You can fid most of them on your path (so that entering their name in the terminal can run them) - and you can see what the path is by entering in a terminal:
echo $PATH
to see where to look. For a specific item, try:
which itemname
where itemname is replaced by the name of the item you are checking the location of. Probably you knew this - but just in case 
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well, i didnt really know either tbh.
so the data directorys you mentioned are all the ones “echo %PATH” lists?
so where i to change distro for some reason these would be the ones i would have to change if i want to keep all app data and such?
Data is kept separate in most cases, and does not get co-located in with the application. It is also not a good idea (and not likely to work) to try to ‘save’ apps across different systems - often they have been built with different libraries on different systems - or at least different versions of those libraries. Arch and EndeavourOS use the latest available versions of things, and would not likely work elsewhere!
The best idea for most is the separate your data out from the ‘system’ stuff, and THAT can be moved freely between systems - once you have installed the new systems’ versions of the apps.
We have come a long way from CP/M and MS-DOS where applications and their data lived together in a common directory!
im always backing up apps separately on an external drive before moving, so as you said its probably better and safer to continue that way but thank you for giving me such detailed answers
Good luck. Just don’t try to ‘restore’ them to another type of distro! Arch-based is fine ( the apps come from a common source) so a partial list would be Arch, EndeavourOS, ArcoLinux, ArchLabs, Archfi, Anarchy… nothing debian-based ('buntu. mint, Pop etc) or using rpm packages… G’night.
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