Why is saving a document to an alternate drive still a 12-step process in 2025?

[akaFiona]

Hi all,

This isn’t a request for help — I know how to use fstab, I’ve symlinked my folders, I’ve mounted all my drives. I’m here because this experience is broken by design, and I want to start a real conversation about it.

I have a modern PC with multiple internal drives:

• One for the OS (as it should be) SSD
• One for projects and documents HD
• One for game installs and modding SSD
• One for AI and archive storage HD

The point of having a dedicated OS drive is to keep it clean, uncluttered, and stable — not to dump every screenshot, save file, config, document, and modding folder into it and hope for the best.

But here’s the reality:
Every time I try to save a file, I get dropped into ~/Documents, as if the other drives don’t even exist. Most programs don’t remember where I last was. There’s no system-wide way to intuitively navigate, remember, or work with multiple drives from save/load dialogs — not even with Dolphin doing everything right in the background.

Why?

This is not a fringe setup anymore. A ton of creators, gamers, professionals, and neurodivergent users run machines like this. It’s not just about power users — it’s about respecting the logic of a well-organized system. Linux is supposed to be modular and flexible — so why is this one basic function so hard-coded into $HOME logic that doesn’t suit most people anymore?

If there’s a tool, framework, or actual movement trying to solve this — I’d love to hear about it. If there isn’t, then I want to start building toward something better. Even just naming this friction point feels overdue.

Thanks for hearing me out.
— Fiona

 

[wizardfromoz]

G'day Fiona and welcome to linux.org.

I may not be the one to help you with this, but I'll ask a couple of questions, the answers to which may assist others to help.

1. You are using KDE Plasma I take it, which distro and version?
2. Which browser?
3. Home partition or Home folder on / root ?
4. Dual-boot with Windows, or just Linux?

I have to sign off to start tea soon, but I will stay tuned to see if I can help further.

Chis Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Brickwizard]

Are you using a Debian based distribution?? If you do, the following should work [i has for others], where the article references Sollyk read as your distribution, where it says Dolphin, read as your file manager

HOWTO: Move /home to second HDD - SolydXK Community Forums

forums.solydxk.com

 

[KGIII]

You can probably change your browser's default download location - and tell it to prompt you every time you download a file.

 

[PuppyHome]

Check (in your browser settings) always ask where to save downloads. Problem solved at that level.

 

[Trynna3]

I am planning to do the same: having LMDE on nvme and there is a space for sata ssd where I plan to keep data. I asked the chatbot, got three options, each coming with pros and cons. I think I will go for the easiest one that maintains the speed of nvme. Still a few months to go before Win10 loses support.

Option 1: Bind Mounts or Mount Points​

Mount directories from the SATA SSD into specific folders of your Linux install (e.g., /home, /var, or /data).

Steps:

1. Install Linux (e.g., Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch) on the NVMe drive.
2. Format the SATA SSD (e.g., with ext4 or btrfs).
3. Choose mount points for the SATA drive:
   
   • Example: mount it as /mnt/storage, or even /home/youruser/Videos, /opt, or /srv.
4. Add it to /etc/fstab to mount automatically at boot.

Example fstab entry:
UUID=xxxx-xxxx /mnt/storage ext4 defaults 0 2

Pros:

• Very easy to set up.
• Granular control (you choose what directories live on the SATA SSD).
• Easy recovery and backup.

Cons:

• Not truly “merged” into one volume.

Pro Tips​

• Use UUID or LABEL in /etc/fstab to prevent mounting issues.
• If using symbolic links, back up your config often.
• Use rsync or mv to move big folders (like Steam library) to the SATA SSD.

Recommended Setup for Most Users​

If performance is important and you're not trying to learn advanced storage:

1. Install Linux on the NVMe SSD only.
2. Format the SATA SSD and mount it as /mnt/storage.
3. Use symbolic links or move large folders there:

ln -s /mnt/storage/Videos ~/Videos
ln -s /mnt/storage/Games ~/Games

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is what the chatbot came with. Any issues, more experienced pals?

 

[bob466]

Welcome to the Forum.

You can save anything to anywhere...I don't see what you're going on about.

How do you think I transfer Documents...Movies or anything else to other Drives...I use cut and paste...simple and there's not 12 steps involved either.

 

[theLegionWithin]

in KDE, for projects/documents, you can change the default locations in System Settings > Session > Locations. dunno much about other DE's presumably they have something similar.

 

[MikeRocor]

Hi akaFiona, and welcome to the forums.

While I don't have a solution for your specific situation, I do suffer the same sort of frustration. I don't use KDE but I run into a couple of annoyances in the same vein.

I don't use a "Downloads" directory, and I do set firefox to download directly to my home directory by default, though I also set it to ask me every time. Yet something, and I still think it's firefox, always wants to create ~/Downloads/ so I've gone so far as to create an empty regular file, with no write permissions for anyone, as ~/Downloads

Same with ~/Desktop/ - I don't use that and I don't want it around. Same imperfect solution.

Those are a minor annoyance and don't affect my day-to-day usage.

The "Open file" dialog in firefox lists a bunch of shortcuts in its left-hand pane, including one for each mountpoint under /mnt/ - whether the FS is actually mounted or not. But it doesn't list the the main directories under / - which is too bad because, at boot time, I create symlinks in root to certain important directories. Of course there's no shortcut named "root" or "/". There -is- one called "+Other Locations" but, really, why not just call it "My Computer"! And, unless you have the "open File" dialog stretched out to a pretty large size, "+Other Locations" (at the bottom of the list) is not visible without scrolling. Interestingly, both Desktop and Downloads still appear in the list of shortcuts, even though both locations are intentionally broken (not directories). Even more interestingly, since their locations aren't valid directories, both work exactly like "+Other Directories" instead of causing errors.

I know it looks like I'm singling out firefox but that's just because I happen to have it open right now. There are other offenders, though I'm not sure how widespread the issue is. In each case, I've become so accustomed to working around it that it really doesn't bother me any more unless something makes me stop to think about it (thank you very much )

Re. your user name: I have a big old former gaming rig whose host name is "Fiona" as kind of a counterpoint to my main backup server, "Shrek" and my tiny application server, "Farquaad" (No offense intended if your IRL name is Fiona - I'm sure you're not an ogre.)

 

[dos2unix]

As others here have mentioned... change your download location in your browser.
Or add a softlink to another directory. Quick and easy either way.

 

[bob466]

Why do some people want to make things so complicated.

Is it because they want to be different or just want to create problems...imagine what Linux would be like if everybody got what they wanted.

If some people think it's so hard to copy anything to another Drive...how did I do this...

Must have been magic.