I've got a pogoplug running Arch Linux that I'm using for a NAS with rsync backing up my data over SSH. Right now, I'm the only one using it, but I'd like to add my roommate as well. She has her own external hard drive on which to store her backup data.Would it be strange to mount /home/my-user/ on the hard drive I currently have my data backing up to, and /home/roommate-user/ on her hard drive? Or is there a more sensible way to do it? What's the best practice here?
Linux multi-user system: Each user's home partition on its own Hard Drive
users;directory structure;home
Yes, that's a perfectly reasonable way to do it. Having home directories on a separate partition from the OS is pretty common. Having home directories directly under /home is common on systems with a small number of users; systems in institutions with a large number of users often have subdirectories under /home corresponding to different departments of the institution, which may be mounted from different disk pools or different servers. On a system with one or a small number of main users, making these users' home directories mount points is reasonable; the only downside is that each of them will contain a lost+found directory. You may prefer to have /home/my-disk and /home/roommate-disk as mount points and /home/my-disk/my-user and /home/roommate-disk/roommate-user as home directories, but having /home/my-user and /home/roommate-user as both mount points and home directories is also fine.