Moving from VM to full install

So I’m getting closer to ready to take the plunge and install EOS over my win10 install completely. Currently in windows I have a C: drive that is a 250GB nvme drive and an F: drive that is a 1tb ssd.

Some of the questions I have are:

  1. As far as partitions… I don’t plan on having a swap file/partition (it’s a desktop so no hibernation and I have 16gb of ram, which should be plenty), so I think the best plan is to have my /home on the 1tb drive and everything else on the 250gb drive. My understanding is this will allow me to reinstall the system side of things easily without touching my documents, pictures, etc. I’m hoping I can do this without formatting the 1tb drive during the install (currently formatted as ntfs), which would mean I could use it to “store” stuff when I do the install. Does this partition scheme make sense? Is doing what I’m thinking about possible? Will I need to/be able to reformat the 1tb drive as something other than ntfs after the install? I assume if I need to change the file system on it after the install I’ll need to empty it.

  2. I’m going to stick to what seems like a basic/solid file system and use ext4 and add a password for full disc encryption (for both drives?) during the install. I’ve read a few guides and it all seems straightforward since I’m not dual booting or anything like that. Are there any other watch outs?

Anything else in general I should be aware of or plan for? Does this make sense overall? This will be my first non-VM install of linux, so I’m nervous for sure (hence running just the VM for months). Thanks in advance for the assistance.

You don’t want to put /home on an ntfs partition. ntfs doesn’t support POSIX permissions under Linux so that will cause some chaos.

You could, however, mount your 1tb elsewhere and then symlink or bind mount ~/Documents, ~/Music, ~/Pictures, etc to the ntfs volume. That way the ntfs volume will hold most of the data that is in your /home.

I don’t think the installer is going to be able to encrypt an existing ntfs volume without destroying the data though.

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Thank you @dalto for getting back to me.

I was afraid that NTFS was going to be an issue. What if I cleaned everything I needed off of the nvme drive and do the entire install onto it without touching the ssd? I would physically unplug it inside of the case so my dumbass didn’t do anything wrong during the install. My hope after that would be to mount the ssd after I’m up and running and then pull everything I need off of it onto the nvme drive (space wise, this should be possible), leaving the ssd empty. Would I be able to format it then as ext4 or something more linux friendly and then move my /home to it? Does having the /home like this make sense and align with what I’m thinking about as far as being easy to reinstall if needed (let’s hope not)?

That is what I would do.

This should work

Yes

Many people do it that way. It is more a matter of personal preference.

Good luck!

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Awesome! Thank you again for your sanity check on this. Hopefully I’ll get the time this weekend to move the needed files around and get the install set on the nvme drive. After that I might have some questions about the formatting of the 1tb ssd and the setting of that for my /home, but that’s for another topic. Wish me luck! :smiley: :beers:

I would definitely do the install on the SSD completely, and then deal with the data later - but I wouldn’t move /home over. As was mentioned above, use it as a data drive only - and link the ‘default directories’ onto it to keep your data separate. I even run multiple distros on my system, and they ALL use the data drive that way. In the event of difficulties, not only is my data OK - but can be accessed and worked on/with as needed without reference to the state of the OS.

The linking can be done with bind mounts, or even soft links, and is easy to track for backups or other things.

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Thank you for the feedback. I think the single drive install is 100% the way to go for my situation. After things are running I’ll figure out the /home or data situation that works best. I want to use the hdd space for sure, but the most simple set up is going to be best for me, because I don’t plan on reinstalling frequently/ever and I don’t plan on any dual boot set up (VMs are my friend).