Ubuntu Installation :: Using SD Card As /Home - Or An Extension Of /Home?

I have installed Ubuntu Lucid Lynx to dual boot with Vista Business on a Toshiba Port�g� R500. Everything seems to be working great out of the box, but I have a problem with available space on the rather modest (but spectacular performance) 64GB SSD.

1) Current Partitions:

Toshiba includes three partitions on the new 64GB system, to which I have added one primary Linux container partition, enclosing two logical partitions.

- /dev/sda1 TOSHIBA SYSTEM VOLUME: 1.6GB, Partition type "Unknown (0x27)
- /dev/sda2 Windows Vista Business: 49GB, NTFS
- /dev/sda3 HDDRECOVERY: 6.5GB, Hidden HPFS/NTFS (0x17)
- /dev/sda4 Linux Container for sda5 & sda6: 7.6GB, Extended
- /dev/sda5 Ubuntu Filesystem: 6.6GB, ext4
- /dev/sda6 Swap Space: 1.0GB, Linux swap

I'm sure I'll remove Vista eventually, but in the meantime, (along with MS Office) it requires a whopping 32GB just to admire itself, after all the updates and security upgrades have been applied. I shrunk the partition to 49GB to leave space for future updates and upgrades.

Right now, Ubuntu only occupies 2.4GB of it's allocated partition, leaving 3.6GB free (I know, that doesn't add up to 6.6GB, but that must be something to do with GiB vs. GB, ... or magic, maybe). Swap is only 1.0GB, with 2.0GB of RAM, but I don't use Hibernate.

2) Installing /Home on SD Card

Well, I tried this first, since I have a nice 8GB, Class 10 SD Card, and a built in SD Card reader. With the SD Card inserted during installation, I was able to select it and designate it as /Home, but when I tried to restart after insallation was complete, I got an error message before the Ubuntu login screen could appear.

I think what is happening is that it doesn't mount normally when booting. It's not listed as a bootable device in BIOS, but there is a Toshiba Bootable SD Card utility included with Windows, which needs a bootable floppy or something to work. There must be something that allows the BIOS to recognize it as a floppy during boot, or whatever, but any Toshiba Utility isn't going to work with a Linux file system. Puppy doesn't like it either for the Puppy sfs saved user file (although it will usually work if I copy them there manually, rather than allow them to save automatically).

3) Extending /Home to the SD Card

I thought I'd just have to copy stuff to the SD Card manually, as extra storage, when /Home got too crowded and cosy. Then I noticed that as soon as I inserted the SD Card it immediately got added to the total space avaialable shown by the Disk Usage Analyser accessory (which just happened to be open at the time). So now I see 10.8GB total, which is plenty to start out with for me. I assume this is because the SD Card had been formatted to mount as /Home when I first tried that solution, and got recognized as soon as it was inserted in the slot.

Questions:

a) Will this work? Will /Home really use the extra space, or is it just "pretending"?
b) Is there anything special I might need to do?
c) What do I do with the three folders already on the SD Card, obviously put there during the failed attempt to install /Home on the card? (The third folder is hidden: ".ecryptfs".)?
d) Is it acceptable to leave swap with just 1.0GB, since I don't need to hibernate?
e) Anything else I need to consider?