You’ll notice that it doesn’t have a line describing a partition on it. So we need to look for an entry for /dev/sdb. In this example, the new drive is the second drive to be fitted to the system. So /dev/sde would be the fifth hard drive in the system.
The first drive is named /dev/sda, the second is /dev/sdb and so on, with the last letter increasing each time. Scroll through the output until you have identified the new drive. The fdisk command will list the drives and their partitions for us. If you’ve just fitted a drive to a Linux computer, or installed Linux to one of the drives in a new multi-drive computer, and rebooted, there’s little evidence that the new drive is even present.
RELATED: How to Back Up Your Linux System With rsync Identify the Drive Now, before we start, go and make a backup. But, if you’ve already installed a Linux distribution, you can use these instructions to move your current home directory to a new location without losing anything or reinstalling your operating system.
Generally, you’ll just need to go into the partitioning options, create a separate partition, and mount it at “/home”. If you’re setting up a new machine or adding a hard drive to an existing one, you may want to have your home directory on a different drive than the default location.Īn increasingly popular configuration for modern personal computers is to have a medium-sized Solid State Drive (SSD) holding your operating system and a larger Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSHD) or traditional hard drive (HD) as your the main storage for data. Or you may have a single traditional hard drive in your system, and you’ve added a new HD for increased storage. Whatever your reasons, here is a simple and blow by blow run-through of moving your home directory.īy the way, if you’re installing a Linux system from scratch, you’ll probably see an option to create a separate home directory in your Linux distribution’s installer.