[SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

MAYBL8 · 2023-09-24 16:01:21

Right now I have home dir in the / partition.
I was debating with myself on breaking out the home folders on its own partition.

If I am using Arch does this even matter? Meaning other distros that aren't rolling when an upgrade is done you would end up with a new home folder unless it is on a separate partition. Most other distros tell you to install new instead of trying an in place upgrade.

So I was wondering if it makes any sense on Arch to have a separate partition for home.
Maybe even put it on a separate drive all together.

Looking for advice from the community.

Thanks

Last edited by MAYBL8 (2023-09-25 13:40:45)

jl2 · 2023-09-24 19:04:40

The only advantage is that you keep your personal files in the case of a reinstall/distro hop.
Else, having many smaller partitions isn't efficient for storage space, you can have your /home full while your / has plenty of space left (which wouldn't be the case if they were on the same partition). This is the same for a separate /var and /usr.

And for the case you have an extra drive that is else unused it *might* slightly improve performance if they have separate hardware paths.
But on the other hand, a RAID would do a better job, and thus it's the same storage question from above again.

So, I don't recommend it (but if you do, plan in ~200GB for steam games )

Trilby · 2023-09-24 19:07:24

The primary advantage to having a separate home partition is that it makes it easy to reuse that partition and maintain all the user data if you ever change distros and / or reinstall arch from scratch. If the home directory is on the root partition it is challenging and a bit risky to preserve the data under /home in such conditions.

The primary disadvantage seems to be that it is that one may incorrectly estimate the space needed for / or /home resulting either in one being a tight fit and / or needing to resize (which itself can be tricky and potentially risky).

How much weight each of these factors carries in the decision process is entirely subjective and can depend on your usage patterns, longevity with a distro, and accuracy in anticipating space needs. I've always had /home on it's own partition - I've been very happy about this choice many times, and have never once regretted it.

mikapyon · 2023-09-24 19:48:19

Never tried and I prefer separate /home but according to the wiki its even possible to reinstall Arch with /home on the same partition: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Partitioning#/home

seth · 2023-09-24 21:05:26

It's not the only way to get there but https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Data-a … encryption
One might wish to encryt the user data but not care to much about the thief being able to see that you were using archlinux btw.

thoushaltnot · 2023-09-24 21:23:18

Using btrfs and mount home as a subvolume is the best solution imho.

Brocellous · 2023-09-25 02:02:07

I don't think there's a good argument for separate /home partitions in $CURRENT_YEAR.

Awebb · 2023-09-25 05:18:47

I haven't had separate partitions for /home and / on neither my Arch laptop nor on any Windows machines in over a decade. A few notes.

Unless you want to format the drive, the only folders you have to worry about are /home and perhaps /srv, as well as anything out of the LFSH you may have created. Deleting anything but two folders is relatively trivial; you probably selectively delete files every day. There is no malicious arch installer that can accidentally wipe your disk.
All my "dotfiles" are synced via git on another machine. Backups exist for all my user files. I am a conservative follower of the "if you do not have a backup, you do not have a file" mantra.
When I didn't have a second computer, all backups went to USB drives.
I never had to reinstall the laptop running Arch, because Arch is easy to fix and rarely breaks catastrophically enough to warrant a fresh install. I did so, because I wanted to.
My most common reinstall scenario across all devices I ever owned was new hardware, either through buying a new computer or drive failures. A separate home partition will not save you from a dead drive.
Having not enough space on /home or /, while having gigs of unused space on the other happens way more frequently than I am comfortable with. I work with huge files a lot and a lot of media edit programs have opinions regarding their cache locations.
The one pitfall of not having a separate root partition is the possibility of running out of space, rendering your system unable to boot in some scenarios. This can happen even with a separate root, but users are more likely to do something stupid in /home.

mikapyon wrote:

Never tried and I prefer separate /home but according to the wiki its even possible to reinstall Arch with /home on the same partition: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Partitioning#/home

There is no automatic partition setup in Arch. All you do is delete everything you don't need anymore and proceed normally with pacstrap.

Last edited by Awebb (2023-09-25 05:20:26)

Trilby · 2023-09-25 12:45:18

Awebb wrote:

There is no malicious arch installer that can accidentally wipe your disk...
There is no automatic partition setup in Arch.

These statements were true right up until April of 2021. Now there is.

MAYBL8 · 2023-09-25 13:39:53

I appreciate all of the suggestions and opinions . You have given me allot to investigate and learn.

On this particular desktop I have several OS's .
MX linux was my main driver and now I am converting over to pure Arch. That is why the question was asked.
My MX has a separate /home partition.

I think what I am going to do is create a separate /home partition for my Arch install and folder by folder move my files to it.
I don't want to move any .files or .folders in case of incompatibility between the versions of packages used.

I currently have home in a folder on the root partition in Arch and I will modify fstab when I get the new /home created.

I am going to mark this post solved but keep the discussion going if needed.

Thanks everyone.

Soultrigger · 2023-09-25 18:10:15

Since we are discussing about home, is there any folder within home that is worth putting in another partition to preserve the ssd? (any temporary files and such? I suspect .cache might be worth it)

I feel I will put var on another partition in a HDD just to preserve a bit the SSD, but maybe I am being extra zealous.

Soultrigger · 2023-09-25 18:12:47

MAYBL8 wrote:

I appreciate all of the suggestions and opinions . You have given me allot to investigate and learn.
On this particular desktop I have several OS's .
MX linux was my main driver and now I am converting over to pure Arch. That is why the question was asked.
My MX has a separate /home partition.
I think what I am going to do is create a separate /home partition for my Arch install and folder by folder move my files to it.
I don't want to move any .files or .folders in case of incompatibility between the versions of packages used.
I currently have home in a folder on the root partition in Arch and I will modify fstab when I get the new /home created.
I am going to mark this post solved but keep the discussion going if needed.
Thanks everyone.

The packages in Arch are really Vanilla (I mean as close to as they are released as possible), so your configurations files shouldnt create any problems. It is sure I didnt install another distro, but I did reinstall Arch once to try some new stuff and my desktop was already as I used it before because of the home config files.

Arch Linux

#1 2023-09-24 16:01:21

[SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#2 2023-09-24 19:04:40

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#3 2023-09-24 19:07:24

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#4 2023-09-24 19:48:19

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#5 2023-09-24 21:05:26

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#6 2023-09-24 21:23:18

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#7 2023-09-25 02:02:07

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#8 2023-09-25 05:18:47

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#9 2023-09-25 12:45:18

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#10 2023-09-25 13:39:53

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#11 2023-09-25 18:10:15

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

#12 2023-09-25 18:12:47

Re: [SOLVED] Looking for pro's and con's of having /home on it's own parti

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