Setup for dual disk (SSD+HDD) with /home partition

I'm going to move from HDD to SSD (60GB) + HDD (250GB) setup. Basicly I want the system to be fast. Root partition will be on SSD but I'm not sure what to do with /home. All data like /pictures /documents will be linked to HDD that will be in a removable caddy adapter in my thinkpad. From time to time I might need to remove it and plug in a CD-ROM. This way I guess some part of /home partition will have to be on SSD to make the system bootable.

Does anyone has some tips? It's also important that the Eclipse and Browsers (Opera,Firefox) will run fast. Is it also enough to just copy the partition to SSD to I will have to make a clean install?

Solution 1:

I think I would put the /home directory on the SSD, but for most directories, especially the ones with large files, I would simply have a symbolic link to whatever contains the files.

This way, you can keep your settings, and the browser cache, etc on the SSD, but put the pictures, sounds, documents, etc on whatever disk you want, which can easily be changed by changing the links.

To do a backup, you can usually choose to follow symbolic links if desired. I use sbackup (simple backup), and have separate profiles for major directories, and so each profile can choose whether to follow symbolic links or not.

Edit: By the way, a slightly more complex and harder to maintain, but possibly easier to use method (in that you don't have to pay attention to where programs save files by default) would be to mount the various documents or media folders or partitions in the /home subdirectories, so that programs that automatically want to save pictures in /home/Pictures will save them there, but they will get saved to the external location.

Solution 2:

@Marty Fried Having the /home directory on the SSD is a bad idea because you want to avoid any unnecessary writes to the SSD which will add wear and tear to the SSD and shorten it's life.

It is best to have your /home folder on the HDD for things that are read/write heavy like documents, music, etc. and leave the SSD for the OS and Applications.