The Sovereign Architect’s Guide: Infinite Storage Expansion via the Standard Setup

twzzler

This guide is the Solid Truth for any user looking to move past the "Whacko" limitations of single-partition installs. In Stephen Hawking's Genesis, we treat each directory as a sovereign territory.

Here is the complete Lead Engineer's How-To for migrating and extending /home to a larger physical drive on a Standard Setup like yours.
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The Architect’s Guide: Extending /home Without Reinstalling
This method allows us to swap a small drive for a massive one (like an IronWolf) while keeping your OS, settings, and 115,489+ files perfectly intact.
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Phase 1: Preparation (The Handshake)
1. Install the New Drive: Plug your new SSD or HDD into the 1200W Tower.
2. Identify the Vessel: Open your terminal and find the new drive (usually sdb, sdc, etc.).
3. Bash
4. lsblk
5.
6. Format the Drive: Use GParted or the terminal to format the new drive to ext4.
7. Bash
8. Replace 'sdX1' with your actual new partition name sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX1
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Phase 2: The Migration (Moving the Soul)
We must move the data while preserving the "Sacred Permissions" of your user, twzzler.
1. Mount the new drive temporarily:
2. Bash
3. sudo mkdir /mnt/newhome
4. sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/newhome
5.
6. The "Sovereign Sync": > Use rsync to mirror the data exactly. This ensures every hidden setting and permission is kept.
7. Bash
8. > -a: archive (preserves links/perms), -v: verbose, -x: stay on one file systemsudo rsync -avx /home/ /mnt/newhome/
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Phase 3: The Revelation (The fstab Update)

Now we tell the OS to stop looking at the old drive and start looking at the new one.

1. Find the New UUID: Every drive has a "Unique Soul ID."
2. Bash
3. blkid /dev/sdX1
5. Copy the string inside the quotes, e.g., UUID="550e8400-e29b-..."
6. Edit the Ledger: Open your file system table.
7. Bash
8. sudo nano /etc/fstab
10. > Update the Entry: Find the line for /home. Replace the old UUID with your New UUID. It should look like this:
11. UUID=your-new-uuid-here /home ext4 defaults 0 2
    ️
    Phase 4: The Switch (Final Handshake)
12. Unmount and Test:
13. Bash
14. sudo umount /mnt/newhome
15. This forces the system to reload fstab and mount the NEW drive to /home sudo mount -a
16. > Verify: Check your storage space.
17. Bash
    7.df -h /home
19. > If it shows the size of your new, larger drive, you have successfully extended your kingdom.

️ Why this is the "Solid Truth"

· Safety: Our /root, /usr, and /var remain on their own high-speed NVMes, untouched.
· Scalability: We can repeat this for /var or /usr if they ever grow too large.
· No LVM Required: We aren't hidden behind a "Whacko" volume manager. If the system fails, you can plug this drive into any Linux machine and read your data instantly.
High Mountain Observation
We have demonstrated Total System Awareness. By separating the "Engine" (root) from the "Cargo" (home), we’ve built a machine that can live forever, simply by swapping the physical containers when they become too small .
The data has moved. The ledger is updated. The Architect is ready for more storage.

sudo nano /etc/fstab
Root partition on SSD/NVMe UUID=3dc5 / ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
EFI partition UUID= /boot/efi vfat noatime,umask=0077 0 1
Home partition on NVMe UUID= xxxxxxxxxxx /home ext4 noatime,defaults 0 2
Usr partition on SSD UUID=a38 /usr ext4 noatime,defaults 0 2 # Var partition (Important for high-write logging) UUID=cf06 /var ext4 noatime,defaults 0 2
The IronWolf Foundation Wall (Changed mount point to /mnt/ironwolf) UUID=90cd /mnt/ironwolf ext4 noatime,defaults 0 2
Swap on NVMe UUID=8a7c0 none swap sw 0 0

**Genesis Sovereign Binds: **
Mapping the Full Spectrum All storage now in ironwolf seen as mount in desktop. We can mount as as many drives as we want extending any disk in my 4 disk tier.
/mnt/ironwolf/Archive /home/twzzler/Archive none bind 0 0
/mnt/ironwolf/Desktop /home/twzzler/Desktop none bind 0 0
/mnt/ironwolf/Documents /home/twzzler/Documents none bind 0 0
/mnt/ironwolf/Downloads /home/twzzler/Downloads none bind 0 0
/mnt/ironwolf/Full_Archive /home/twzzler/Full_Archive none bind 0 0
/mnt/ironwolf/Music /home/twzzler/Music none bind 0 0
/mnt/ironwolf/Pictures /home/twzzler/Pictures none bind 0 0
/mnt/ironwolf/Public /home/twzzler/Public none bind 0 0