TheCrafters001  
genuine linux question

is it a good idea to have /home on a separate partition or drive?
Oct 11 at 8:17pmWeb
Show threadKarbinOct 11

@tc001 it depends, made sense in the past and still have reason in some cases. With /home in a separate partition you can reinstall the system without backup by just mounting home and not formatting it.

You mantain data and cache and it was good when an upgrade consist in reinstalling from live.
It still make sense if you distrohop.

just keep in check the cache

Show threadGothPandaOct 11

@tc001 It can be! If you do, it makes it easier to migrate from distro to distro, or to just nuke yours and reinstall. As long as you don't reformat the /home partition/drive, you can just keep your files, preferences, etc.

You still need to reinstall the software you had, but all the stuff in your home folder stays put.

Show threadGothPandaOct 11
@tc001 that being said, it's absolutely not necessary, and isn't something to worry too much about unless you are in a place where you're wanting to try out some different distros.
Show threadTheCrafters001  Oct 11
@gothpanda how difficult would it be to move my home folder to a different drive? I am not planning on doing it anytime soon, but if I do it in the future I would hate to have to reinstall everything to just have my home folder elsewhere.
Show threadGothPandaOct 11

@tc001 If you're just wanting to move your home folder, you shouldn't need to reinstall anything.

You could copy your home folder to another drive or partition with the `rsync` command. It's not too tricky, but might take a few minutes to plan out before you do it. Then, once it's copied, you can set up the computer to mount that drive/partition as /home (that might take a few reboots and some config file editing, depending on your setup)

You'd only need to reinstall if you reinstall the OS.

Show threadGothPandaOct 11

@tc001 There's a new-ish video from @vkc made that goes over pretty much everything you'd need to know about rsync

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKCIi-NxJEo

Using rsync for backups, because it's not shiny and new

YouTube