If I correctly understood what you're asking, you just install it on the 1 TB NVMe SSD, and when you boot into the operating system, it would just detect your 2 TB HDD.

I'm not familiar with installing Manjaro, but assuming you want to wipe Windows 10, you would probably just choose an option like "Guided --> Use the entire disk space" or something like that in the installer.

Edit:
Partitioning is only necessary if you want to install multiple operating systems alongside each other (such as in a dual-boot setup).

Last edited by s8as8a on 20 July 2020 at 9:08 pm UTC

The easy division is to have your ESP and / on one drive, and /home on the other. That has the added advantage that if you need to reinstall for some reason you can preserve all your settings and data that are stored in your Home directory.

However, that would have your Steam library on the "wrong" drive from what you've requested, so you'd need to get your hands a bit dirtier.

You can use that as your basis but still have your Steam library on your / partition either by creating a directory there and telling Steam to use that directory for your library, or directories at a time by moving particular game directories to somewhere on your / partition and then symlinking them back to your normal Steam library location. When I had the then-standard tiny SSD and big HDD, that's what I did: I had /home on the HDD but particular games that I wanted the faster read speed got moved to /usr/local/games and then symlinked back.

Another option is to have that partition for flat data, mounted wherever you like - something like /mnt/data, say. Then symlink subdirectories from there to wherever you want to access them from. That way your data will be preserved over reinstalls, but not your settings.

depending on how many programs you install i would say 30-50GB ext4 ROOT /
100MB boot
rest ext4 /home

with 32GB RAM and nvme you dont need a swap

do you need the 2TB for anything else? if you wanna use it on windows too i would try BTRFS and WinBTRFS drivers for windows
if it is linux only you can use ext4

Last edited by mylka on 21 July 2020 at 3:07 am UTC

Quoting: mylkadepending on how many programs you install i would say 30-50GB ext4 ROOT /

I wish I found that recommendation when I was looking to switch to Linux... Most recommendations I found were 20-30 Gb, and I ran out of space in 3 month... I ended up having to reinstall everything on a 60 Gb partition for / (root), like I used to for Windows.

Quoting: Thrash_Metal_ComputersIf anyone has any corrections/improvements to what I have listed here, please let me know. I always want to improve my knowledge on Linux and how to better explain things to people.

You're using UUIDs, which is entirely sensible and the correct thing to do. It would probably be useful, in general, to also explain why you're using UUIDs when you're already doing a detailed explanation.

The /dev/whatever device descriptions can change between boots, depending on what else happens to be plugged in and the order in which devices perk up to be counted. You don't want your machine to not mount a partition because it happens to be sdc rather than sdb this time. The UUIDs don't change between boots, since they're a property of the partition rather than something that needs to be determined each time.

A bit much for a short post, but if you're doing a long post anyway people will understand the steps a bit better if they know the reasons for them.

Quoting: vacuumcleanerHow do I partison it so that I have the OS and Steam games on my 1 TB nvme SSD and pictures, downloads, documents, etc on my 2 tb hdd?

You partition it like the installer will tell ya, then place your "pictures, downloads, documents" wherever you want.

Also my catch-all advice for any novice is to read good quality, boring, stable documentation and lots of it. Only then you'll be able to process more volatile info and filter through what you don't need to know.
Thus asking what you are asking and asking it here is a poor start. But ppl prefer it this way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I fixed it now!
Thanks Thrash_Metal_Computers with the easy step by step and pictures!

many valid ways.

What I would personaly do (and actually done on my main computer), would be:
Install everything including /home on ssd just ignoring the hdd like it does not exist.

Then add the hdd partition (or partitions) to the fstab mounting them on positions like /storage (not in home).

Then create folder (or folders) for the user (users), so the folders have the desired privileges.

Then create symbolic links to desired positions in my home folder to these folders for easier access.

Last edited by lucinos on 21 July 2020 at 2:02 pm UTC

Another minor tweak:

Quoting: Thrash_Metal_ComputersEDIT: Sorry, you actually need to restart your machine instead of logging out and in again.

You don't actually need to do either. sudo mount -a will mount the filesystems listed in fstab.

Quoting: Thrash_Metal_ComputersYou will need to configure your /etc/fstab file, so that it will automatically mount the drive every time Manjaro loads. This is where the UUID for your 2TB HDD comes into play. To configure the fstab file, run the following command:

I prefer using gnome-disks to manage mounting easily and safely.