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I have an SSD and regular HDD drive in my laptop. The SSD drive is not used at all; it is not even being mounted. I am using Arch Linux. I'd like to start using the SSD, and from what I have read I believe mounting /usr there would be a good idea. My question is: with an installed system, how do I go about setting up the /usr partition on the SSD and moving the current files to this new location?

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Note: These are generalized instructions. Some comments below indicate that your specific distro may or may not have problems with you doing this. That is why the backup in step 4 is recommended.

  1. Format SSD. What file system to use on SSD is another question.
  2. Boot from a rescue CD and mount up both HD and SSD.
  3. rsync -avP /usr from HD to SSD.
  4. Move /usr to /usr_backup just in case things fail.
  5. Create empty /usr on HD for a mount point.
  6. Update /etc/fstab on HD to mount /usr from the SSD.
  7. Reboot and hope.
  8. Don't touch /usr/lost+found/
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If you consider keeping the contents of the old /usr, then you can skip step 4 and 5. Mounting the SSD partition on top of /usr will hide the old contents. Only keep in mind that it will get outdated as the system is updated. – antje-m Jan 22 '12 at 1:56
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But, by creating a new /usr_backup, you can delete it once everything is verified to be working, and free up some space in the root. – sybreon Jan 22 '12 at 2:11
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For step 2, you can just reboot into single-user mode; you don't need a rescue disk for this. (In GRUB, append single to the kernel options line.) This avoids the need for the "mount HD" part of the step, too; it should be mounted as part of a single-user boot. – Warren Young Jan 22 '12 at 5:31
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Note: this is not straightforward. Having /usr on a separate partion is not supported in Arch, which means that you will need to take some additional steps... – jasonwryan Jan 22 '12 at 6:17
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After step 6, you should verify whether mounting the ssd as /usr works before rebooting. – user unknown Jan 22 '12 at 11:19
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