Advantage of a separate /home partition?

[Vincent Trouilliez]

On Sat, 2005-06-04 at 11:31 -0400, alex wrote:
> I recently asked about the advantage of having /home on a separate
> partition and was told that in the event ubuntu had to be reinstalled
> for whatever reason, you wouldn't lose the data you had accumulated
> in /home.
> 
> Then, while I was installing ubuntu, I noticed that you can create
> a /home partition as part of the installation.  This brings up a 
> question -----
> 
> If you previously had a /home partition and needed to do a ubuntu
> reinstall, how do you prevent losing the original /home partition data
> during the reinstall process?  
> 
> It seems to me that you still have to include the old /home partition 
> in the reinstallation but if you did, it would be formatted and you'd
> lose the old data.  
> 
> If you didn't include it in the reinstallation, you'd end up with a new
> 'home' directory in the system root and you wouldn't have access to the
> old /home partition.
> 
> What am I missing?  Is there some way to include the old /home partition
> in the reinstall without reformatting it?
> 
> alex, the OF

No worries Alex.
When you re-install Ubuntu, chose "manual partitioning", then select
your home partition, then chose "use as" (from memory...), you will
should get a menu with options like : 

"format"
"Use and KEEP existing data".

Select the most appropriate option ;o)


HTH

--
Vince