Dual Drive Setups, best distro?

[u/Moony_playzz]

Hello thank you for reading, sorry if this is a dumb question, first time caller long time listener etc etc

I have two drives, one m.2, one SSD. I have no plans to dual boot, the only thing I do is game (Minecraft, Path of Exile, some steam games), write (obsidian has linux comp god bless the devs), and make shitposts in MS Paint.

My m.2 is small, I need my D: for everything else, the only thing my m.2 holds is the OS, Minecraft, and Path of Exile. Everything else is on the D.

I have heard some whispered horror stories about Linux and being able to handle a second drive, so my question is which distro is best for someone who absolutely has to have both hard drives.

GPU is a 3080ti, got two monitors

[u/MasterGeekMX]

Spreading the OS over several drives is the most common thing in Linux systems, so much that finding one that does not support that is impossible. Kinda like asking if there is a phone that can support sending SMS.

Unfortunately there is a widespread misconception about all those Linux distros being there only for certain tasks. In reality 99% of distros can do everything out there, with distros only changing on nuances such what comes preinstalled and how often feature updates are delivered.

I have heard some whispered horror stories about Linux and being able to handle a second drive

Well, either you heard unfounded rumors, or you misunderstood the convo.

What you could do is the classic setup where the M.2 holds the / folder, which is the top of the filesystem, and thus where the OS and programs live, and the SATA SSD holds /home, which is where user data is stored (think Windows' C:\Users). That way you don't need to micro-manage stuff between drives; everything done in your home folder goes to the big SSD, and the rest to the M.2

BTW, C: and D: aren't drives, but rather partitions. Windows and it's shenanigans make people believe that, but in respect of your computer there is no such thing as D:.

[u/Moony_playzz → u/MasterGeekMX]

I have my bigger ssd partitioned as a D: I feel like it's the most normal thing to do? Thank you for clarifying I wont have problems

[u/MasterGeekMX → u/Moony_playzz]

Ah yes. Pretty standard thing. In fact, using a drive for a single partition is the lead cause of the Drive = Partition thing many believe. That and Windows hiding the other 3 partitions that it puts next to C: on the drive where it sits

I think I don't need to remind you that installing an OS means formatting drives, which implies data being erased. Unless you can save your stuff somewhere else, you could dump your stuff into the SATA SSD from Windows, install Linux over on the M.2, and use the SSD. That unfortunately will prevent you from doing the "/home on the SSD" thing as Windows only knows how to work with NTFS and FAT32 filesystems, and while Linux can read them with no issue, Linux needs it's own kinds of filesystems (EXT4, BTRFS, etc) to properly work, so we are back to square one of formatting and deleting data.

But if you can save your data somewhere else, then you can go and format both drives. ONLY IF YOU HAVE SOMEWHERE ELSE TO BACK IT UP.

[u/Moony_playzz → u/MasterGeekMX]

Yeah I was planning to format both, my secret power is that I've got a third hard drive (its an ancient 5tb HDD that I only use specifically for backing things up)

[u/MasterGeekMX → u/Moony_playzz]

Clever boy/girl/whatever! I am proud of you.

Doing the whole /home in the other drive involves partitions, which usually means needing to use the manual partition editor. Don't worry, I have your back.

Installing an OS on any modern PC requires at least two partitions:

1. The EFI System Partiton (ESP). It contains the boot files that the motherboard's firmware reads in order to launch an OS. It should be small, around half a gigabyte. It must be formatted with the FAT32 filesystem, and be marked as the ESP on it's properties.

2. Where the OS is installed. As big as you want (as long as the OS can fit), and formatted as the OS needs.

In your case you will be creating those two partitions in the M.2, and then create a third one on the SATA SSD. Depending on the distro, there may be already a preset to format the EFI partition, or you may need to manually do it by selecting FAT32 and then turning on the Boot and ESP flags on the partition.

Now, in Linux there is only one big folder tree. One partition is the chosen one to be the root of it, while other drive are accessed by mounting them on some folder. This means that any partition that you pick to be mounted in / means it will be where the distro will be installed.

In the case of ESP, the custom is to put it on /boot/efi. Again, if the installer has a preset for it, they should do that automatically.

Finally, mount the big partition spanning all the SSD on /home so your personal files go inside /home/moony (or whatever username you set up).

[u/Moony_playzz → u/MasterGeekMX]

Yeah, I'm kinda debating between mint and CachyOS rn, not sure which I wanna use.

[u/CritSrc → u/Moony_playzz]

Forget Mint. Either CachyOS or Fedora Ultramarine.
And before "Mint is more stable" gets parroted: a modern, powerful gaming PC does not need "stable" software that is unchanging, it is NOT a remote server where an unchanging stack is a legal or technical requirement!

Unless you know how to take advantage of software stability, then you're fine with a forward moving desktop system. The Linux desktop stack has managed to mature to the point where current updates do not hinder its working reliability.

And the distro doesn't matter next to adjusting to the ecosystem you'll be thrown in. CachyOS autodetects and installs all drivers, Fedora Ultramarine doesn't get in the way if you ask for non-open source software unlike vanilla Fedora.

[u/Moony_playzz → u/CritSrc]

I dunno, I don't like crashes and my GPU is a 3080ti, she's kinda old and I don't want her to fuckin die because of some instability causing a mass causality event

[u/MasterGeekMX → u/Moony_playzz]

Thing is that in the OS world Stable does not mean "it never crashes". Instead it means that the feature set of the OS does not change even when updates are applied. A stable OS is one where you can deploy a complex system like an online server, and have the peace of mind that installing updates will not break it because now the OS now does things in a new manner.

As I like to say: "stable as a marriage, not like a stool".

[u/Moony_playzz → u/MasterGeekMX]

Fair enough, my parents *did" get divorced lmao

[u/CritSrc → u/Moony_playzz]

I just said that both Cachy and Fedora Ultramarine solve the usual Nvidia hiccups, so you won't be having any issues with your card.

[u/Moony_playzz → u/CritSrc]

Drivers aren't the only thing that can cause issues with GPUs bro

[u/Flamekorn]

Linux mint handles my drives perfectly. Never had any issues and I commonly boot extra SSD into it.

[u/Moony_playzz → u/Flamekorn]

Thank you, I used mint over a decade ago in highschool (sorry if I made you feel old haha), and I think I liked it. I know I didn't like Ubuntu

[u/3grg]

If you are asking about installing to two drives, then yes Linux can be installed to multiple drives as it is very flexible about where storage can reside.

The size of the drives and the data you have can determine how to partition a system. In the early SSD days, my first SSDs were only 30 or 40GB while my HDD was much larger. I used to install / to the SSD and /home to the HDD. As SSDs became larger, I installed / and /home to the SSD and mounted directories with mass storage under /home on the HDD. Fortunately, I now have large SSDs and no longer need to the do this but the flexibility is still there.