How would I go about splitting up programs and files between two drives? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works to c/linux4noobs@programming.dev

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I know this is a pretty common question, but the Google results don't seem to offer a good solution and are mostly aimed at people who already know Linux.

I am looking to switch from Windows, where I have my OS and whatever big game I'm currently playing on my 128GB SSD, and everything else (games, most software, documents, ect.) on my 2TB HDD. ELI5, How would I replicate this on Linux? I'm planning on installing Mint, but am open to using Bazzite if it offers any additional tools for this sort of this.

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[-] Tuuktuuk@piefed.ee 1 points 1 week ago

A question for others before I write a more thorough reply:

Wouldn't it be a good solution to move the directories elsewhere but then symlink them to their default locations? You'll need to think a bit about file permissions while doing that, but are there any other caveats?

For the asker:
UNIX-like systems such as Linux are intentionally made so that a directory can be on a different hard drive than its parent directory. So, you can have /usr/games, including almost everything on it to be on hard drive #1, but then define that /usr/games/quake should be on hard drive #2. The limitation is, you cannot have different parts of the directory tree on the same hard drive. So, if /usr/games/quake is on its own partition, you cannot have /home/plzgivehugs/artwork/bigfiles on the same partition.

...except, with symlinks you kind of can.

this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025

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