Install Wine Drive C on another HDD

[shag00]

I imagine those of you reading this post are likely in a similar situation to the one I found myself in; having an SSD boot disk with Ubuntu and Wine installed and receiving disk nearly full warnings. So here is an easy way to solve the problem. In this walk through I have installed a new partition so you may need to modify your commands depending on where you choose to locate drive C.

Some base info:
1/ My .wine folder is located in ~ (where "~" = /home/scott-pc).
2/ My chosen location for the extended/expanded/new drive C is /media/WinDisk/scott-pc/drive_c (where /media/WinDisk is the mount point).
3/ I am user scott-pc on a PC named angel.
4/ The owner of the mount point is root:"admin group" of which I am a member
5/ This is a home system where convenience and speed are far more important than physical security.
6/ Wine version = 2.16 on Ubuntu 17.04, current as of September 2017.

Step 1
Create a directory called scott-pc in /media/WinDisk

Code: Select all

/media/WinDisk$ mkdir WinDisk

Step 2
Move to Nautilus (it's faster) + (not gksudo nautilus so as to keep permissions at user level)

Code: Select all

/media/WinDisk$ nautilus

Step 3
Navigate to Home/.wine, right click drive_c, select Move To..., navigate to /media/WinDisk/scott-pc and left click Select (button in bottom right)
Step 4
Back to Terminal, we need to symlink the old location with the new location of drive_c

Code: Select all

/media/WinDisk$ ln -s /media/WinDisk/scott-pc/drive_c /home/scott-pc/.wine/drive_c

Step 5
All done, you can install new programs in the same way you did before or use ones you already have. If you have any, your existing desktop icons, to start a program, will work without alteration.

If I've made an error let me know.

[dimesio]

That will work, but IMO it's much simpler to just put the whole wineprefix in the new location instead of bothering with symlinks. FYI, you can also have multiple wineprefixes, and experienced users usually do. https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Can_I_store ... 2F.wine.3F

[shag00]

I am trying to address the issue that this information does not exist here at this site and more importantly there is such a scarcity of good quality, well written and explained information for new users. At the moment I am struggling to implement a productivity collection of programs using Ubuntu and have run into SSD space limitations. A perfect example of my first statement is the link that you posted where the trouble with it is that it is written by an experienced user for consumption by another experienced user rather than for consumption by a novice such as myself trying to get his 2nd Windows program to work in Wine. The example here is that I googled something along the lines of, "install wine on another HDD" which from memory does not return the result you linked in the early pages of the google results, further no mention is made of the system requirement that some or all of the other files and folders, other than drive_c, in the .wine folder must stay in the user's home folder. To wit, I spent several hours today finding and vetting the information I posted above without finding your link. After reading point 6.5.2 I will test it over the coming days and I'm sure it's adequate for experienced users but for novices it falls a bit short of adequate or even imparting a sense of confidence.

I suppose what I am trying to convey is that the forums need to recognize 2 groups of users, those who know shit from dirt in the linux/wine world and those that don't. The future of Linux and Wine is in the hands of those that don't, we are the group that needs to be spoon fed until we get our acts together, the experienced, often trained, users can often get by with a nod in the right direction. I have made a decision to document here all the issues I run into while I'm accessing the viability of replacing windows with ubuntu, issues I have no doubt other people will run into. The really good thing we have here is 2 solutions to an issue that will likely be faced by many new Wine users so I thank you for your reply.

I suspect a private message would have been more appropriate for this response but despite clicking on all the fields in your post I could not find a way to do that...

[dimesio]

no mention is made of the system requirement that some or all of the other files and folders, other than drive_c, in the .wine folder must stay in the user's home folder.

That is not true, and I don't know where you got that idea. Perhaps you are confusing location with permissions? It is true that the user must be the owner of the wineprefix, but that has nothing to do with its physical location. I have a separate /wine partition on my hard drive that contains multiple wineprefixes (14 for the apps I use, plus testing ones I delete and recreate), no part of them is in my home directory, and they have worked fine for years.

I googled something along the lines of, "install wine on another HDD"

That's the wrong thing to google for the question you wanted to ask. Where you install Wine and where you put your wineprefix(es) are two different things.

To wit, I spent several hours today finding and vetting the information I posted above without finding your link

The FAQ is the first item under "Most Popular Links" on the wiki main page. https://wiki.winehq.org/Main_Page

the forums need to recognize 2 groups of users, those who know shit from dirt in the linux/wine world and those that don't.

I'm well aware of that. I've been dealing with both of those groups here for over 8 years. If there is anything in the FAQ, User's Guide, or other documentation on this site that you find hard to understand, please ask about it, and if you have suggestions for clearer wording, please post them. That said, this is not a general "Linux for newbies" forum; basic knowledge of how to use your operating system is expected here.