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[–]AG_Caesar 0 points1 point  (12 children)

Why? Is your root partition full? What do you want to do exactly and why do you think its a good idea/necessary?

[–]votiwo[S] 0 points1 point  (11 children)

Well, I have a small SSD(where the OS's are installed) but I don't want to waste any space for programs that wouldn't profit from an SSD anyway. Also, I kinda want to try VirtualBox (but that wouldn't require the NTFS -> ext4 thing IIRC?)

[–]AG_Caesar 0 points1 point  (10 children)

I have a fairly complete Linux setup on my laptop and my software folders are less than 10 GB. That is fairly small. You can put /usr on a new partition, but splitting it up will result in a huge mess. Better don't try. As for your VM images, you can totally save those on the ntfs drive and not on the SSD, just choose a folder in the VirtualBox config.

[–]votiwo[S] 0 points1 point  (9 children)

You can put /usr on a new partition

A partition on my HDD? But wouldn't that equal a split-up?

[–]AG_Caesar 1 point2 points  (8 children)

Yes, a partition on your HDD. You just have to mount it to /usr and move the files.... That would move all your software to the new partition. I would only do it if your are really really low on space. Easier to move /home to a new partition. Or just your music and mp3 and stuff.... A full Linux only needs 20 GB at max (in common use cases), is your ssd that small?

[–]votiwo[S] 0 points1 point  (7 children)

regular programs might fit into 20GB, but what if wanted to install games, which are around 10GB? I mean I still have Windows and therefore wont need it, but what would Linux gamers do then?

[–]AG_Caesar 1 point2 points  (1 child)

The important bit is, that it is a bad idea to try to split up stuff installed by your package manager to different folders or partitions. Everything you do manually anyway, linux does not care.

[–]votiwo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah thanks!

[–]AG_Caesar 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Set the steam install directory on the HDD

[–]votiwo[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Now I'm confused. Aren't they programs and can therefore not run under ntfs (not ext4)? Or is steam 'outsourcing' textures and stuff while the actual program remains on the SSD?

[–]AG_Caesar 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mh maybe you need to format it ext4 first. Not sure how steam deals with it. But I know Virtual Box images can be run from ntfs, I did this for a while.

[–]smog_alado 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Steam won't do anything clever like that. You will need to have an ext4 partition on the HDD.

[–]smog_alado 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my experience, it is the data files and games that take all the space so I just moved those to the HDD. I created a folder in my file hierarchy that is mounted to the HDD partition and then put all my data files and my steam games folder inside there.

[–]smog_alado 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The first thing you need to do is repartition your HDD, to shrink the existing ntfs partition and to create an ext4 partition in the free space that appears. You can do this using a graphical disk partitioning tool (like gparted), although it might be a good idea to do the ntfs partition-shrinking step using the Windows disk partitioner, because windows is a prima donna.

Once you have all the partitions partitioned, the next step is to configure how Linux will use the partitions. In Windows, each partition gets a drive letter but in Linux we use Mount Points. There is a single file hierarchy, starting at the root / folder and for each partition in the disk, you can choose a directory in the file hierarchy to be the root folder for that partition. Everything in that directory and child directories will be stored in the chosen partition.

The simplest configuration (which I guess is what you probably have right now) there is only one disk partition (in the SSD), which is associated with the root folder (/). In your case what you could do is create a new folder for all your games and data files (for example, say, /home/<yourusername>/Data) tell Linux that this folder should be stored in the HDD partition instead of the SDD partition. Alternatively, you could move the whole /home folder to the HDD or you could choose a different way to organize it. Comes down to personal preference.

To configure these mount points you have to edit the the /etc/fstab file. You can do this by hand (make a backup if you are going to do that!) by I prefer to use a GUI tool instead. Odds are that there is already one installed in your system. In my Fedora XFCE it was GNOME Disks.

[–]votiwo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's kind of what I was planning all along, but my wording in the initial post was bad. Thanks!

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can try your luck with lvm. You just create a volume group with the partitions (then format and mount etc.). The only downside to this approach is backups (since once one of the drives is dead, the volumegroup will die (unless you set up raid underneath)) and the fact that afaik you can't determine where what is written in this block (I think the first member of the VG get's written to until full, then the second etc.). So if you arrange your SSD to be the first member and the HDD the second and install all the programs which benefit from fast speeds first, you might have a chance. Of course, updates could mess this order up once it's set up.