Hey folks. I recently got an old X220 with an mSATA SSD. I plan to to install Linux on there. It doesnt matter which OS: Debian, Ubuntu or Arch. The machine is so old that all distros play nice with it.
Anyway, the speed on the mSATA is slower than the 2.5 SSD. So I want to know if is it possible to have your /boot, /efi, swap on the mSATA. Then, the /home on the 2.5 SSD? Any problems with this setup and if anyone tried it before?
Now, for the reasons why I use mSATA instead of just putting Linux on 2.5 SSD:
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the mSATA is Samsung, pretty rare nowadays. The health is still very excellent. I checked with CrystalDiskInfo. So might as well use it.
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My X220 has a problem finding out grub if installed on the 2.5 SSD. It’s literally a 50/50 chance it can find grub properly. So:
a) you installed Linux on 2.5 SSD, reboot.
b) grub error screen
c) restart
d) boot into Linux well
Note at d) if I do anything to restart/shutdown the computer, you are back at step b) and require another reboot to reach Linux.
Any advice is welcome.
Ha, home has been traditionally always on a separate drive. That’s the reason why root user has the home under /root and not /home/root, so that it can login even if the home drive didn’t Mount.
As a curiosity, even /usr was traditionally on a separate drive and that’s why critical binaries and libraries where under /bin and /lib while all non critical stuff under /usr. It is called “split-usr”.
Nowadays /usr is always on the same drive as root, and we moved to a “merge-usr” approach where stuff under /lib and /bin is a symlink into /usr/lib and /usr/bin.
Because when HDDs where 50mb in size, even that small binary file counted as big :)