Perfect install
One article that I have yet to see documented concerns the installation of a Linux operating system on a PC with a dual hard-drive configuration.
You may have noticed that fast SSD drives and traditional hard drives are now extremely affordable. This now allows for the versatility and diversity of the Linux OS to be fully exploited. The PC would be configured with, eg, Linux Mint installed on the fast, but low capacity SSD and the home folder installed on the slower but larger capacity traditional spinning hard drive.
This configuration should allow easier upgrading/ swapping of any Linux OS but more importantly, also offer greater protection of the user’s personal data since it will be stored away on the ultra-reliable HDD and not on an SSD which, should it fail, could result in a potential total loss of the user’s data. I understand that data recovery from an SSD drive is not a trivial task, nor indeed, if it is even possible at all?
Furthermore, this type of PC dual-disk setup should allow other versions of the Linux OS to be easily tried out
without resorting to using VirtualBox. By simply plugging in another SSD with an entirely different version of a Linux distro installed on it, a different Linux distro experience could be tried out.
It may even be possible to have several different Linux distros installed on the same SSD drive and the home folder installed on the traditional hard drive. Distro hopping could become a useful tool when trying to show Windows users what Linux can do. Alternatively, a single PC could be used to try out, eg, a Linux media centre distro install, and rebooted back into a normal office desktop PC. StuartBakermault,viaemail Neil says: This is an interesting thought… You’re right in terms of storage, I recently bought a 240GB SSD for £40 but still run a multi-terabyte spinning hard drive for main storage, so I think there’s a good excuse for trying things out here. Answers like this show that it’s not hard, though a symbolic link might be even easier: http://askubuntu.com/ questions/21321/move-homefolder-to-second-drive. We could certainly look at a Perfect Linux Install feature including this.