(SOLVED)How to setup specific home folders to DATA partition

I have a 500 GB hard drive. I have set 20 GB for Zorin and 8 GB for swap. I want to use the remainder of the space as a DATA partition to store Documents, Music, Videos and Pictures that are normally stored in the /home/username folder. Therefore; when I open up Nautilus and click one of the folders in my home folder such as Documents, Music, Videos or Pictures; these specific folders have a different path pointing to the DATA partition. Also, I would like to make the DATA partition formatted in NTFS so that I can access all the files when I use Windows 7.

Does anyone know how to set this up? Can this be done?

Hi spavila,

well if you were starting from the beginning, I would do 20GB root, 4GB swap and 100GB home, the other space (assuming you are not using Windows) I would just create a FAT32 partition which you can mount or unmount at will when you open Nautilus!, its that simple really!!.
If you want the FAT32 partition automatically mounted, just leave everything as is and it should automount when you boot the PC, see also:

Dconf Editor > Org > Gnome > Desktop > Media-Handling > Automount/Automount-open/Autorun Never

Regards Wolfman

Wolfman wrote:Hi spavila,

well if you were starting from the beginning, I would do 20GB root, 4GB swap and 100GB home, the other space (assuming you are not using Windows) I would just create a FAT32 partition which you can mount or unmount at will when you open Nautilus!, its that simple really!!.
If you want the FAT32 partition automatically mounted, just leave everything as is and it should automount when you boot the PC, see also:

Dconf Editor > Org > Gnome > Desktop > Media-Handling > Automount/Automount-open/Autorun Never

Regards Wolfman

Thank you for the suggestion. Although, I would be using Windows. My goal is to have a hard drive partition that both Windows 7 and Zorin OS 6 can share. Therefore, I will need an NTFS file format.

swarfendor437 wrote:Not sure if this would work, but why not use your Windows 7 OS create an NTFS partition with a shortcut link in your Public Folders, but still call it /home! Then when in Zorin, create a 'Public' Folder in /home with a shortcut to the NTFS /home! Install Mount Manager so that your external drive is mounted each time you boot - remember Linux can access, read and write to NTFS partitions (provided Windows shut down cleanly!) - so there should be no issues when accessing from Windows 7. (I have not tried this myself I hasten to add, just wandering thoughts of a Penguin!)

Hi Swarf,

This is closer to what I want. I definitely need to use NTFS. However, when using Windows to access the hard drive partition, I really do not need the hidden files which are stored in the /home directory. I'll need to make specific links for each folder in the home directory. I only want Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Video folders specifically.

Ok, this is what I came up with and it seems to be working.

http://jj89128notes.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-to-share-files-between-windows-7.html

You can mark this as SOLVED.

Hi spavila,

I missed the part about W7 somehow, sorry about that, here is an example of various scenarios using Gparted, I will mark this as solved for you:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

Regards Wolfman