Take the 2-minute tour ×  I want to install Ubuntu and I would
like to set my /home partition in an external USB hard drive
that is directly connected to my router, and access my data
through the LAN connection. Can it be done?  share|improve this
question add comment  1 Answer  Executive summary: Yes, you can
do this, but it will not work very well, because the drive
probably doesn't support Unix-style permissions.  You can make
your home directory exist on a remote filesystem rather than the
local computer. (If you do that, you might want to have another
user account, to use for troubleshooting if a problem develops
with the remote share.)  However, to work properly, home
directories should be on volumes that support Unix-style file
permissions. Your router probably uses SMB/CIFS to share the
drive. Such permissions can be exposed well enough through
Samba, so if you're using SMB/CIFS (Windows file sharing) to
share a drive that is formatted with a Unix-style filesystem,
this can work (though your router wo