Hi there, first post to an issue I’m sure is an easy fix but I haven’t found any documentation for. I’m trying to install Workstation 43 onto my computer, I have a 1tb SSD and a 6tb HDD. I want the system to treat the HDD as storage and the SSD as the boot drive, but no matter what I do in the installer, it prioritizes the 6tb HDD as the boot drive and sets the 1tb SSD as storage. I’ve tried selecting and deselecting in just about ever possible combination but I can’t get the installer to target the SSD as the primary. Is there anything I can do or am I out of luck?
While installing select ONLY the SSD.
Although not normally required it also may be possible to disconnect the HDD while performing the installation.
After the installation completes the HDD can be added as storage.
See, the whole reason I was trying to do this was that the secondary drive wasn’t mounting properly. On a prior attempt I had accidentally installed the boot on the hdd and it worked exactly how I wanted it to. Took forever to boot up, but it treated the additional drive as a seamless extension of the system’s storage. Is there really no way to designate the ssd as the boot drive without having to manually mount the hdd?
I don’t have the option of trying to install with 2 different drives, but it seems that you should be able to select one of the 2 drives for installation in step 2 of the installation, then it is easy to add the extra drive and mount it after the installation completes.
There also is the storage manager (step 2), where you select the devices to use and define the partitions to use. (the 3 vertical dots at the far right upper corner).
If I were doing a new installation with hardware as you describe, I would not ever want the storage drive to be part of the file system used for the OS but would want it in a discrete file system. This is what I do with my /home partition which resides on an 8TB raid array. Having it separate makes new installations easier by not having the stored data at risk of being deleted with a reinstall.
Since it appears that you had already used the HDD for the boot device the installer believes that is what you want. You might use fdisk or gdisk and remove all partitions on both drives before lauching the installer so it appears they are brand new and never used.
Both drives are completely formatted, no partitions or anything. Images for context here. I have no further options beyond encrypting data.
Your first image gives the option to change destination. You could use that to eliminate the HDD from the installation so everything is initially on the SSD only.
The same image shows the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner which give access to the storage manager where a lot more options are available.
You really should not spread a btrfs volume across two devices with radical differences in speed (SSD and HDD are radically different in speeds for both read and write). You will be limited to about the speed of the slowest device in most cases.
This is why I suggested using only the SSD for the installation then adding the HDD for storage afterward as a separate file system.
Ah, fair enough. Thank you for the insight, maybe this is the kick in the pants I needed to get a proper secondary SSD lol