can I make a separate Home partition

[hansencomputers]

Greetings,
I'm about to setup Mint 6 on my wife's PC. I was wondering if the Home folder can be made into a separate partition? Is this choice available during setup? I would like the ability to upgrade or reinstall Mint in the future without affecting the Home Folder (partition).

Thanks,
Mike

[eddie]

Hi there,Yes you can have a seperate partition. IT is created prior to the install process using gparted.
Somewhere between 5gb and 10gb for /(root) folder,approx 1 gb for swap and whatever for /home. On an 80 Gb drive I use the balance of the drive for home and a seperate 80Gb drive for 'Data'


Should you need to reinstall then it is a good idea to delete (using Live disk) the hidden .files in your home folder first.
These can be found by opening your home folder and selecting View>Hidden Folders.

eddie

[Decemberdoom]

To add onto what eddie said...

Make sure you click "Manual" in the Mint installer when it asks you about partitions. From there you can select the partition you want to mount as /home and set it's mountpoint to /home.

[hansencomputers]

Thanks guys, I tested this on a separate hard drive, and was able to partition in the Mint setup, and achieved what I wanted. Consider it solved.

Mike

[Fred]

I was wondering if the Home folder can be made into a separate partition?

Yes... but do you have a real reason for doing so?

I would like the ability to upgrade or reinstall Mint in the future without affecting the Home Folder (partition).

That has never happened and never will happen. Anytime you upgrade, or even reinstall the same version, you will have to deal with config files in the /home folder, even if it is on another partition, if you don't format your /home folder/partition.

What you do gain is some isolation of your data from your install, if your data is in your /home folder. It is better to have your data in a separate /home partition than have it in your / partition in your /home folder.

If it is data isolation you are looking for you might consider making a separate data partition and not having it in your install at all.

Fred

[hansencomputers]

Thanks Fred, I guess what I am after is the isolation of my data, and can do so by making a separate partition, unrelated to the install. I will experiment with that option.

Mike

[Zwopper]

[TOTALLY OFF TOPIC]
Hey Fred - is that you in your avatar?
If so, nice to finally see you!
[/TOTALLY OFF TOPIC]

Sorry for hijacking the thread!

[Fred]

Zwopper,

Yes, that is my ugly mug. One of my daughters caught me at my favorite pass-time, taking a nap.

EDIT: My wife made me grow a beard several years ago to help cover up some of the "ugly." She said I was scaring young women and small children.

Fred