[Tfug] A truly weird question... :)

[Jim March]

OK.  I don't even know how to phrase the subject line on this one.

Let's say I have a laptop with two different hard disk bays (which I
do!).  I can set the BIOS to boot off of either one.  Both bays are
SATA.

My current boot drive is a conventional 250gig SATA drive.  It's
running Ubuntu Maverick under Gnome, and /home is part of the same
partition.

What I want is to score a 30 to 40gig SSD, put it in the other drive
bay, set it up with another OS (probably Sabayon 5.4 with Gnome) and
have that map to the same /home directory as is found on the current
250.  BUT then, if I shut down completely and pull the SSD drive out
(it swaps with a DVD-R drive) I want it to come up with Ubuntu booting
on the 250 with the same /home directory as I get when I boot from the
SSD.

Is that even possible?

I want to do this for those rare occasions when I actually need a
DVD-R drive...95% of the time or more, I'll run with the SSD in the
swappable DVD-R bay and the magnetic drive in the normal hard drive
bay (which in a Thinkpad T60P is a rubber-armored monster with
excellent airflow, perfect for a magnetic drive).

Thoughts?  How in hell do I set this up, at least in general terms?  I
can likely work out the details if I have a starting point...

Jim