Hey, I was wanting to partition my Hard drive, but want to keep my data and ubuntu system separate, but I will have multiple users (3-4 users). I assume /home will house my data (which will be shared between all users, if this is not the case with /home, please correct me) but where will our user profiles be located? in /home or /usr or elsewhere?

I was asking so that I can clone my / directory but I also want the image file to include user profiles (but not my data).

This is in case of system corruption or if I just wanted to use the cloned image for a different computer system.

I would like to know where the user profiles are stored though, that way if I want to update my cloned image I could save the user profile data, wipe the partition, re-image it from the clone, and then update the older user profiles.
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BONUS Question: If I encrypt the entire /home folder for better security, can my other users read from it? And can I easily move files between it and a external HD?

Thanks for your help!