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Good day, I have a 120GB SSD, and 1TB HDD on my system. And on my SSD I have Windows installed. Afterwards, I added Linux Mint as dual boot. Before I install, I shrinked space from the HDD and created all /,/home,swap etc. on HDD. But when I launch Windows vs. Mint, it makes me feel the difference a lot, so I thought it would be cool to move my Mint to SSD. I have few questions about it.

  • Will it increase my boot and general speed if I somehow move / to SSD or will I have to move all files to there?
  • Would it really be a good idea to shrink a 120GB SSD?
  • If the 2nd question's answer is yes, would it make difference to do this operation (moving Mint to SSD) as dual boot rather than normal installation? (following this guide http://blog.oaktreepeak.com/2012/03/move_your_linux_installation_t.html)

OS: Windows 10 64bit, Linux Mint 18.1 64bit

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  • It's always better to have your OS system files on the SSD. So moving '/', '/usr' and '/var' (optional) to SSD will increase your speed a lot. Though I would move everything to the SSD and leave the '/home' to HDD only. Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 13:21
  • @0xAF Thanks for the info, it seems best option for me too, since I don't have really a lot space in SSD. Will it be enough to just move those partitions to the newly created SSD parts? Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 13:28
  • If you want to stay small in size, move "/usr", "/lib*", "/bin", "/sbin", "/etc" only and you should be ok. Basically you should move only the binaries and libraries folders to SSD and leave the data folders like var, media, tmp, home to HDD. It should take less than 1GB or 2-3GB probably, depends on what you have installed.. But should take care of how you do that and update the fstab and probably the bootloader config ... and if you move the these folders, then your ROOT should be the partition on SSD and actually mount the rest of the folders from fstab. Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 13:34
  • More Information we need. sudo parted -l sudo dmidecode -t 0 [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo UEFI || echo BIOS and cat /etc/fstab and as last sudo lsblk -f answers with commands please to pastebin.ca Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 15:25

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Ok, since you might get confused from the comments, I've decided to write an answer. Though what I'm suggesting is not a simple procedure and if you're not experienced enough, you will end up with unbootable linux, or even worse - broken partitions and lost data. I would not suggest you to follow it unless you're experienced enough and know how to recover from boot failures later. I.e. booting from USB, mounting, chrooting, etc... These steps are not a copy/paste howto, so if you have doubts or question on any of these steps, do not start with this.

  • You can create one new partition (5GB for example) on your SSD and move some parts of your linux there.
  • Then format it with Ext4 or whatever FS you prefer.
  • Copy all folders except "/home", "/var", "/media", "/run", "/opt", "/boot", "/mnt", "/proc", "/dev", "/sys".
  • Actually you should be copying "/lib*" folders, "/bin", "/sbin" folders, "/usr", "/etc" folders and some more probably.
  • Then create "/sys", "/dev", "/proc" empty folders on the SSD.
  • You should update the ROOT in your bootloader config and fstab.
  • Here you should find a way to get the rest of the folders mounted, but since they are on a single partition on HDD, it's not that easy.
    • you can mount them in /storage folder for example and make symlinks to the root fs.
    • or mount them in /storage folder and then bind mount them to their root fs folders (mount -o bind)
    • in both cases you should later update fstab to do the mounting.

Note: there are probably many other ways achieve what you want.

On my linux, I have everything on the SSD and a (HDD mounted partition) /storage folder to hold my /home/user/[some sub folders] /var/cache and some other data-huge folders with symlinks to the root fs.

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