Recent update seemed to have installed a separate instance of Manjaro

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It has been over a year since making the leap to Linux for the first time ever and gladly ditching Windows forever. I also started a solo business about the same time as well, so I really put a lot of research before settling on Manjaro in particular.

During a recent update via the PAMAC GUI, I seemed to have installed a entire new instance of Manjaro on another hard drive. Or at least I think it was via the PAMAC GUI, because at one time or another, I seem to remember another update method/feature that Manjaro uses maybe via the system tray notifications thing?

As it turns out, it has been on my list for some time to move my home folder to a separate drive and back up my setting/configurations, etc… So it seems I have managed to accidentally execute part of my plan. I just do not understand how it happened.

After the update, I noticed everything about my system was back to the default settings and I also had to re-setup Thunderbird so I could work. Then I opened a Word document from a client’s email and that is when I really came to expect that something much bigger was amiss. It opened up with Only Office! At first I thought it was Libre Office with the default settings, until I noticed some unfamiliar things about the UI of Only Office.

There is just so much to learn and not enough time to take it all in with Linux and I wish I had started this journey 20 years ago and my nature and curse is to constantly tinker and Linux is a tinkerers freaking dream.

But could I kindly ask someone who has the experience, to maybe possibly explain what I may of did to inflict this unexpected event?

And more importantly right now, how can I tell the current/newest version of Manjaro that is running, how to find/connect to my previous Home folder?

Any words of wisdom from anyone at all would be highly appreciated!

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Hello,

The Pamac tray will always open the Pamac UI and regardless how is opened, the update protocol is the same. An update will never ever install a new instance of a system.

If you have an USB drive with the live system in it, then you might have just booted from it. Moving home directory must be done carefully and if is a separate partition, or different drive then you have to check /etc/fstab … If in doubt, remove the drives you use for backup, other data, and then proceed to identify the UUID of that partition.

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As @bogdancovaciu pointed out, system updates only update the current system, they cannot create a new instance on its own.

If you did reboot into a new system, my guess is what completed it is that reboot, rather than the update.
Moving a system needs modifications in system configuration, most notably in the mounts. Those mounts being configured in files, they are not applied just by saving them. You also need to refresh the loaded state, either through a command that forces that part to take the updated configuration, or… by rebooting. If you started modifying those configuration, they may have been applied after that reboot.