Partitioning 2 SSDs (1TB NVMe SSD and another 1TB SSD) for Ubuntu 18.04

My laptop currently has only a 256GB SSD which has Windows 10 pre-installed on it. I don't need Ubuntu to be installed on this SSD, so I will remove this drive. I am planning to remove the Windows 10 SSD and run only Ubuntu on this laptop on 2 1TB SSDs.

I need Ubuntu to be installed on a 1TB NVMe SSD and another 1TB 2.5" internal SSD which I will put in this laptop as a replacement for the old 256GB SSD. Then I would be able to use LVM to manage these two storage devices in order to make the most efficient use of both drives. I'm going to use these two drives for some heavy machine learning and deep learning projects. I'm not planning to create any virtual machine guest OSs on this laptop, only an Ubuntu 18.04 single boot. How to partition the 2 SSDs on my laptop for an Ubuntu 18.04 single boot?

As far as I know it is required that we need root (/), swap home (/home) partitions. I need this 2TB of disk space (1 + 1) to be used efficiently for only this three partitions without mounting any one of these drives. I have did some research where with 1TB -

swap(SWAP) - 32GB

root(/) - rest of capacity after swap allocated

home(/home) - whole 1TB allocated

In my opinion does root need that much storage capacity? Is there any way to reduce this and add that storage capacity to home? Because I need home storage capacity to be more as I do heavy work?

Solution 1:

Install Ubuntu on one / root partition. Let the Ubuntu 18.04 installer create a swap file by default instead of an unnecessary swap partition. The swap file will stay small if you have lots of RAM and don't use it for hibernation. The other SSD can be automatically mounted at startup to be used as storage space or use LVM to span Ubuntu 18.04 across both SSDs.

The advantage of the first method is that you can remove the second SSD and put it in a new computer and all the files on the SSD will still be there on the new computer. The advantage of the second method is that it makes the most efficient use of the available disk space. I currently use the first method, but if someone else gave a decent explanation of the second method I'd encourage you to try it.

Solution 2:

Why 2x1T and not 1x2T SSD? that would simplify greatly your condition and would avoid any issue on partitioning: one single partition for data and swapfile... or, if I were you, 1 small NVMe SSD for the root fs and swap (file or partition - 64/128G would be sufficient) and one big 2T sata SSD for the /home dir...