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I have an old installation of 18.04 LTS.

  • /home is on /dev/sda. I want to leave this untouched
  • System and everything else is on /dev/nvme0n1p1 and /dev/nvme0n1p2 (swap I think)

I have a bootable USB drive with 22.04 LTS, and I want a fresh install which leaves /dev/sda untouched, and remaining configured for /home.

The installations options presented were not obvious to me - they all warned I was about to destroy all my file.

When I select "Choose Something Else", I am offered a partition editor. I've used such editors before, but I wasn't sure how to ensure that /dev/sda does not get destroyed.

What instructions or menu options should I be selecting?

UPDATE:

So in my impatience, I selected the option to erase Ubuntu and re-install. It felt risky, but it was the only option which explicitly told me what it intended to do. It said it was going wipe both partitions on /dev/nvme0n1, and made no mention of /dev/sda.

The result is that I now have a fresh install of 22.04 LTS on /dev/nvme0n1, and /dev/sda appears as a mounted SSD drive.

All my data under /home/stewart is present, which is great!

But now I want to tell Ubuntu to use this device of my /home, not the one it created under on the installation device.

Responding to Paul Benson, these are my partitions:

$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA Samsung SSD 860 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  500GB  500GB  ext4         SSD


Model: Samsung SSD 970 PRO 512GB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 512GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:


Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name                  Flags
 1      1049kB  538MB  537MB  fat32        EFI System Partition  boot, esp
 2      538MB   512GB  512GB  ext4
Stewart
  • 616

1 Answers1

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You should have (and probably should) boot from your install medium, choose the "Something Else" install option.

Configure /dev/sda as /home and (this is crucial) UNCHECK the box in the "Format" column for/dev/sda. DO NOT FORMAT /dev/sda.

I use this method for all my upgrades.

System configuration and customization information must be saved on /home, or recreated.

The Method:

  • /home on a separate partition.
  • "Something Else" install option.
  • /home configured correctly.
  • UNCHECK the box in the "Format" column.
waltinator
  • 37,856