Feature suggestions: optionally placing home folder into separate partition during ubuntu install

[Daniel Gross]

Hello Phill,

I think you can compare the benefit of having user folder on a separate
partition to users having a backup. 

Most of the time a user does not need the backup. But when the
unforeseen event occurs that requires a restore, then those users who
have a backup will clearly benefit. 

Similarly, those users who loose access to the boot partition (such as
due to a hard disk crash) will clearly benefit from having the data on a
separate partition. At last in my case i could have restored a working
system much more easily without data loss.

In the future when bandwidth will increase and off site backup of all
data stored on a, say, 300 GB hard drive become common, then i guess a
separate data partition will lose its necessity. 


thanks,

Daniel




On Tue, 2010-12-28 at 18:11 +0000, Joao Pinto wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Phill Whiteside <phillw at ubuntu.com>
> wrote:
>         Hi Joao,
>         
>         the same would apply to the option of encrypting their home
>         area, which is on the install CD and causes no end of grief on
>         support. They get the option of that, but not a seperate /home
>         partition? Bearing in mind we are dealing mostly with Windows
>         users, is the encryption part really needed as a default
>         question - or only available in advanced?
>         
>         Regards,
>         Phill.
>         
>  
> Hi Phill,
> I don't have data to support this, but a significant part of today's
> devices are mobile devices. I truly believe that the risk of keeping
> unencrypted data on a mobile device is so high that encryption more
> than an option should be a default.
> Encryption provides a clear and unarguable benefit for most users. I
> am not sure to which support problems are you referring to, unless you
> are doing low level file management (advanced user), home encryption
> is transparent.
> 
> I am sorry but I am unable to identify any clear benefit for most
> users to keep the data on a different partition.
> 
> -- 
> João Luís Marques Pinto
> GetDeb Team Leader
> http://www.getdeb.net
> http://blog.getdeb.net