How to mount a partition on the root directory (for example /data)

Question

I am installing Ubuntu on my empty hard drive and I would like to have a separate partition on which I would store my data, like movies, music, documents, etc.

I don't like the idea of putting those files in /home/user directory because I would have multiple users on my computer and I want them all to easily access those files. I might also have multiple operating systems on my computer.

Now, the idea is, I would like that partition to be mounted on something like /data , instead of /media/data.

Is that safe, and how can I do that?

Answer 1

I don't know what should prevent you from mounting that partition just under root. The command would be sudo mount /dev/sda1 /data, where /dev/sda1 is the partition. Unmount via sudo umount /data.

To mount on startup add the following line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda1    /data    <partition type>    defaults    0    0