2

I'm new to Debian. I've been using Ubuntu for almost 5 years now and I want to switch and use a different distro. I chose Debian.

I would like to know if is it possible store the home directory in a different partition on Debian? I'll use Debian 6.0.3.

I would like to use a FAT partition for /home directory, is it possible? I want to use fat because sharing files between Windows and Debian would be easier this way, and storing /home in a FAT partition would allow me to browse my documents whenever I need.

Also, having /home directory would help me to keep my current /home directory or when I change OS if Debian is not for me.

Improve this question
4
  • 2
    A number of things may break if you do that. There are far too many applications out there that assume a *nix-compatible filesystem mounted on /home. They may try to create symlinks, for instance.
    – Alexios
    Mar 6, 2012 at 18:36
  • 1
    I don't find anything Debian-specific in this question. On almost every Linux distro priograms would have problems with such setup.
    – Alois Mahdal
    Mar 7, 2012 at 0:03
  • 1
    Are you sure you don't need to store any file permissions, no file owners, no ACLs, no case sensitivity, a maximum file size of 4 GiB, a maximum partition size of 2 TiB, no POSIX compatibility, no hard links, no soft links, no journaling, no case sensitivity? If you would like to have some of these features and still be compatible with Linux and Windows, why don't you choose NTFS? I don't see any reason to use FAT on the desktop any more.
    – Marco
    Mar 7, 2012 at 10:52
  • Some related discussions have additional ideas superuser.com/questions/782849/… unix.stackexchange.com/questions/340829/… unix.stackexchange.com/questions/248173/…?
    – Sergey Ponomarev
    Apr 25, 2020 at 20:32

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
7

Yes, but not advisable (as FAT doesn't support permissions).

There are a couple of options you could consider:

  • install the ext2 Windows driver
  • mount the FAT partition inside /home/$USER/<mount-dir>

Either way the drive will be accessible by both systems.

Improve this answer
3

During the installation, you can set up the home directory as you like. After the installation, you can edit /etc/fstab to include mountpoint for the home directory.

Since FAT does not support permissions, it is not advisable as the partition for the /home mountpoint; you will not be able to restrict access to your files, and some programs will fail to run. Instead, use an ext2 partition, and install the ext2 Windows driver.

Improve this answer
2

If you do not want to install the ext2 driver for Windows, there is also NTFS, which has some advanced features in comparison to FAT32.

ntfs-3g seems to support now basic permission checks (not that easy to configure). Nowadays, ntfs-3g seems to work quite stable, but as you can read here having /home on a NTFS or FAT partition can lead to several problems.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.