Advantage of a separate /home partition?

[Ed Fletcher]

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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

During the installation process, you are asked how you wish to partition
your disk.  The partitioning tool shows you the existing partitions and
gives you the opportunity to delete any of them and  make new ones.  It
also asks where you want each partition mounted and if you wish to
format them.  To keep your old /home partition, you select that
partition and tell the installer to mount it as /home and not to format it.

Note that it helps to know which partition was used as /home.  That's
why it's always good to print out a copy of the partition table on your
system before you start the reinstall.

Do this:
sudo fdisk -l >> partition.txt
and print the file.

HTH,
Ed
- --
Ed Fletcher
ed at fletcher.ca

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty or democracy?  -  Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

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