I want to be able to format my OS SDD and format and reinstall without losing any user data, is this possible? I'm currently doing this on Windows 7 and 8 with the help of portable apps and some hacks. Drivers are downloaded automatically on Windows so I don't know how to translate this on Linux.For example, my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles are pointed to my second drive so I just update the path and I'm done.What would be the best approach? I'm very confused about where things are installed, after reading a few articles apparently it's all over the filesystem (from /opt to /usr) so there's no easy way to do this? And of course I'm moving the /home folder to the other disk.
Separating OS on a SSD from user settings and apps on HDD
linux mint;software installation;ssd;reinstall
It's actually quite straight forward.You need to know how you use your system and what will grow over time. In general, the simplest is the following:/home = your user directory as you already mentioned/var = log files go here; mail spool; printer, etc -> this is good to place on a separate partition/tmp = temporary files (you could do the allocation on RAM for quicker access)swap file = put on your fastest HD and google swap file recommended size for linux (~1.5x RAM)When you get more experience you'll know where on your linux system you seem to put your files, but optionally you may also want to consider these:/usr/local = this may be a good place if you like to 'make' most of your installs/opt = like /usr/local; also many apps are installing here more and moreMigrate your current data to some other storage areayou can use rsync or cp to copy the files to another storage locationAttach all the hard drives you want to have participate in your file system to the PCInstall the fresh copy of linux. I have not used all the distributions, but one common theme among the ones I've used is the ability to configure your partitions and mount points during installif you go with my recommendations above, you'll want to choose 'customize' partitions or mount points when the install gets to the point of formatting your driveat this point, the wizard should show you a new screen that allows you to create, edit and delete partitions on your hard drivesit it's anything like Fedora it will have defaulted to only have the / partition and the swap partitionswap is usually defaulted at a sensible value; keep itmodify your / partition, subtracting from the default size the sizes that you want to assign /home and /var ... alternatively, if these will be on another hard drive, then you don't have to modify /, just define the /home and /var and other mount points on the other hard drivenote that if you don't want to do the optional ones now you can do them after without losing dataonce you have the partitions/mounts configured like you want finish the wizard and let the system come upCopy your backed up data back to the right places (e.g., user1 data to /home/user1 and so forth)the wizard install will have taken care of mounting the /var file system to the correct placeif you need details outside of the install wizard (i.e., you want to do it yourself) let me know and I can walk you through that. Essentially the wizard is defining your partitions on the hard drives and then updating the /etc/fstab (for more 'man fstab' and 'man mount') so that your file system mounts correctly at boot time.