Separating Disk Usage

luca19 · February 11, 2022, 4:49am

Hello Everyone,

I have a hard drive and an ssd although, when I downloaded fedora it combine the two disks together. Is it possible to move the fedora os to my hard drive and safe files to my ssd? If so how can I accomplish this task.

Thanks,
Luca

frankjunior · February 11, 2022, 5:13am

Hi i think you want to separate files from your drive where os is located.

Yes it is possible and very easy but i will recommend for a better experience if you leave your os partition into ssd and files into hard drive so apps you load or power on will be extremely fast with ssd and your files will load from hdd now it is your choose what you want. You can clone drive with dd or other option is there can you visit this site they have a good info.

https://www.tecmint.com/clone-linux-partitions/

luca19 · February 11, 2022, 5:36am

Are there negative effects of having the two disks combined? How do I know where the CPU is storing files if everything is in computer. Would it prioritize one over the other. Is my ssd even being used?

Thanks,
Luca

frankjunior · February 11, 2022, 5:49am

It is actually beyond my knowledge that a single pool for 2speed drive what is the actual effect i never done that.
If it will save files to ssd part of the pool or hdd part of the pool.

luca19 · February 11, 2022, 6:14am

My hard disk has 2 partitions for boot and boot/efi. But this fedora partition in my ssd is a little absurd. It doesn’t have 2.2TB Free inside it. But it seems like my os and and files save in this one partition.?

Thanks,
Luca

oprizal · February 11, 2022, 6:58am

Hi, would you like to post the result of lsblk -f. Maybe from there we get the better idea about your system partitions.

computersavvy · February 11, 2022, 10:03am

It looks to me like you selected an auto install with both drives and the btrfs file system was spanned across both drives. While that may be OK, it certainly is not ideal because of the speed differences between the SSD and the HDD. In fact partitions 1 & 2 on the hdd are /boot/efi and /boot so you are not gaining anything in boot time from having the SSD.

I would strongly suggest that you have a backup of whatever is in /home, then do a reinstall and this time select only the SSD for the install. Once the reinstall is complete then you can separately partition the HDD and use it for /home or just data storage with very little effort.

Separating the drives in that way would avoid any potential issues with speed of access and write due to the different speed of the devices. It would keep the OS and installed apps on the SSD to take advantage of the faster read speeds of the SSD and at the same time allow data that is not accessed as much to be on the larger HDD.

In answer to the comment about the display of the SSD partitions. The btrfs file system spans both drives so it actually has 2.2 TB in that partition even though the SSD only provides a small part of that.

sampsonf · February 12, 2022, 12:16pm

Sadly this is still the default behavior of Anaconda doing a default install when both disks are empty.

@luca19 If you are comfortable with command line and have good backup, it is possible to:

separate your SSD & HDD into two independent devices (making SDD empty and HDD holding all data)
Move everything to SSD, so that it is bootable
Reformat HDD, so that it will be the default HOME drive .

computersavvy · February 12, 2022, 7:12pm

Actually, even with the automatic install, if the users only selects one drive for the installation the installer will only use the selected drive. It spans like the OP saw only when 2 or more drives are selected.

luca19 · February 12, 2022, 8:03pm

Hey Rizal, the results of

$ lsblk -f

NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda                                                                         
├─sda1
│    vfat   FAT32       19EF-0FF3                             584.9M     2% /boot/efi
├─sda2
│    ext4   1.0         23817458-02d5-431e-917f-35a634c5cebe  626.8M    29% /boot
└─sda3
     crypto 2           27de3272-85f7-4990-b8c2-1c05b4af400b                
  └─luks-27de3272-85f7-4990-b8c2-1c05b4af400b
     btrfs        fedora_localhost-live
                        897ec513-5307-4341-9123-180e34b6bc33                
zram0
                                                                            [SWAP]
nvme0n1
│                                                                           
└─nvme0n1p1
     crypto 2           8dcba50a-4380-4f90-b6b0-3d599745e874                
  └─luks-8dcba50a-4380-4f90-b6b0-3d599745e874
     btrfs        fedora_localhost-live
                        897ec513-5307-4341-9123-180e34b6bc33      2T     3% /home

computersavvy · February 12, 2022, 10:11pm

With that config you definitely want to do a reinstall, and select only the NVME drive for the install. There is a great deal of speed difference between the HDD and the NVME so you want to ensure all the OS is on the NVME device.

The 256 GB device is more than large enough for all that is needed for the install there, then as suggested you can repartition the HDD and use it for /home or just data.

luca19 · February 12, 2022, 11:13pm

Hey Jeff, how do I backup my files and not lose anything without a USB.

computersavvy · February 13, 2022, 12:22am

Does that mean you do not have a thumb drive or that you do not have a USB port? Guess you should get a thumb drive before you try the backup. You had to have something of that sort to do the install.

luca19 · February 13, 2022, 12:23am

I do have a usb with fedora 33 on it.

computersavvy · February 13, 2022, 12:28am

I would guess you have 2 usb thumb drives then. One with F35 and one with F33. Simply use gparted or similar and partition the f33 usb to its original size, format it with ext3 or 4, then use that for the backup. Use the other one for the reinstall.

luca19 · February 13, 2022, 1:31am

What do I need to back up, just the home file? Will this include my installs such as R. Does this effect my computer negatively in the long run?

computersavvy · February 13, 2022, 1:46am

The only thing you should backup is what you have downloaded and do not want to lose. Programs should be reinstalled, not backed up.

oprizal · February 13, 2022, 7:11am

As @computersavvy said, I think you only need to backup any apps or file you already downloaded manually inside your /home/<your-username>. It will save time to not download it again in the new installation. Also if there any documents you have there.

There are two scenarios possible for you:

Installing all Fedora Linux to NVME and then later mount the hard drive after installation completely finish. Just like you have drive other than C: in Windows (for example drive D:). It will give you optimal speed advantages from NVME device.

During the installation, please be aware on the disk partition step, there should be shown 2 disk icons. Make sure only NVME disk that have round black check mark (click the icon to toggles between mark and unmark).
Install all Fedora Linux to NVME exept the /home mounting.

Basically the steps also same as the 1st scenario as long as you did with automatic partition (only choose the NVME) then after installation finish, move the /home mounting to hard drive. But this for another story and you can create post again here after finishing the installation.

luca19 · February 13, 2022, 1:48pm

Rizal,
Can I zip my home file and email it to myself?

luca19 · February 13, 2022, 1:51pm

And what about my database psql , will I lose my tables