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Convert second disk with OS to pure data storage

My Objective:
Repurpose an obsolete OS Filesystem as pure data storage, removing both the stuff only relevant for the OS and simplifying the directory structure so I don’t have to navigate to <mount point>/home/<username>/<Data folders like Videos, Documents etc.>.

I’m tight on money and can’t get an additional drive right now, so I’d prefer an in-place solution, if that is feasible. “It’s not, just make do with what you have until you can upgrade” is a valid answer.

Technical context:

I’ve got two disks, one being a (slightly ancient) 2TB HDD with an Ubuntu installation (Ext4), the second a much newer 1TB SSD with a newer Nobara installation. I initially dual-booted them to try if I like Nobara and have the option to go back if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason.

I have grown so fond of Nobara that it has become my daily driver (not to mention booting from an SSD is so much faster) and intend to ditch my Ubuntu installation to use the HDD as additional data storage instead. However, I’d prefer not to throw away all the data that’s still on there.

I realise the best solution would be to get an additional (larger) drive. I have a spare slot in my case and definitely want to do that at some point, but right now, money is a bit of a constraint, so I’m curious if it’s possible and feasible to do so in-place.

Particularly, I have different files are spread across different users because I created a lot of single-purpose-users for stuff like university, private files, gaming, other recreational things that I’d now like to consolidate. As mentioned in the objective, I’d prefer to have, say, one directory /Documents, one /Game Files, one /Videos etc. on the secondary drive, accessible from my primary OS.

Approaches I’ve thought of:

  1. Manually create the various directories directly in the filesystem root directory of the second drive, move the stuff there, eventually delete the OS files, user configs and such once I’m sure I didn’t miss anything
  2. Create a separate /data directory on the second drive so I’m not directly working in the root directory in case that causes issues, create the directories in there instead, then proceed as above
  3. Create a dedicated user on the second OS to ensure it all happens in the user space and have a single home directory with only the stuff I later want to migrate
  4. Give up and wait until I can afford the new drive

Any thoughts?

LostXOR ,

Whatever you do, make sure you have a backup! There's always the possibility of screwing something up, no matter how careful you are (or your hard drive deciding to spontaneously self destruct).

boredsquirrel ,
@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net avatar

Depending on the DE you use on Nobara, use GNOME Disks or KDE Partitionmanager and just open that thing and look at it.

It may have several partitions you dont need anymore, and /home is separated, containing all your users.

In that case you could just delete the others and resize the home partition to fit the contents.

If you have a / partition, you can still remove the /boot and /boot/efi and maybe swap partition. Then resize the root partition to fill all the space.

You need to mount the disk in your filemanager and use admin:/ to open it with privileged access.

Open a terminal and navigate to /run/media/USERNAME/DRIVENAME

In there do sudo chown -R USERNAME *

Then after you broke everything an OS would need but that you want, move the stuff from the homes to your root folter from the GUI filemanager. Move, not copy.

Afterwards you may want to do some ext4 repair magic, as I dont know how well ext4 likes messing around with partitions.

krakenfury ,

You haven’t provided any info about your partition scheme for either drive, but I assume you’ve got your bootloader installed in an EFI partition in the newer drive. You will still have an EFI partition on the old drive created by the Ubuntu installer, so just be sure you know which bootloader you’re using.

Option 1 and 2 aren’t functionally any different. It’s not clear what issues you’re worried about, but if you’re nervous about breaking the Ubuntu installation, you might just want to wait until you can get the new drive.

You also don’t give any indication of how much data you have that you want to keep. If the 2tb drive is almost full, you have fewer options than if it is mostly empty or half full. You could resize your EXT4 partition and create a new partition, for example, allowing you to mount a fresh, clean filesystem to a subfolder in your home directory. Once the data migration is finished, you can format the old partitions and mount them somewhere else, or resize the newer partition over them. Be aware that your HDD will eventually fail mechanically, however. Maybe 5 years from now or next week, but they all fail someday.

It’s not clear to me what the goal of option 3 is, but it’s dependent on how you use your machine. If you want to install a lot of applications or games that you want to run fast, you don’t want to migrate a bunch of your data to your newer SSD. If you just want a temporary place to store the data you want to keep until you can format the old drive, I guess this is a fine approach, but creating a dedicated user for this is just adding unnecessary complexity, IMHO.

luciferofastora OP ,

You haven’t provided any info about your partition scheme for either drive, but I assume you’ve got your bootloader installed in an EFI partition in the newer drive. You will still have an EFI partition on the old drive created by the Ubuntu installer, so just be sure you know which bootloader you’re using.

Yes, the new drive has a boot partition mounted to /boot/efi, according to the Disks utility.

It’s not clear what issues you’re worried about, but if you’re nervous about breaking the Ubuntu installation[…]

Actually, that’s a good point. I’m expecting to get rid of the installation anyway, so I don’t need to worry about breaking anything there.

It’s not clear to me what the goal of option 3 is

Same as option 2, avoiding breaking a system I’m getting rid of anyway.

Thanks for pointing out the errors in my line of thought!

Deckweiss ,

I feel like you are overthinking this.

Option 1 is what I would do. Seems very straight forward. And additionally:

Moving files around or deleting files is a very quick operation, because the filesystem will only edit the “metadata” and not have to copy the whole file bit by bit to a different disk.

Maybe delete the OS files first (everything except /home). So it’s not cluttered from the start. Then copy stuff from /home/user/stuff to /

Take special attention to the /boot partition. I don’t know which drive the bootloader for your nobora os is installed. It may have been automatically put together with your Ubuntu to your HDD.

luciferofastora OP ,

I feel like you are overthinking this

Yes, most certainly, but given my own inexperience I figured I’d rather overthink than fuck up because I didn’t know about some detail.

Take special attention to the /boot partition. I don’t know which drive the bootloader for your nobora os is installed. It may have been automatically put together with your Ubuntu to your HDD.

Fairly sure the boot partition is on the new SSD, but I’ll check and leave it untouched if I’m not sure.

Thanks for your advice!

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