I've this 128GB ssd in this new computer I just had built (he did it cheaper than I could, neater, too) along with a 2TB hdd. What I am looking to do is to put all the files needed for boot on the ssd, and everything else on the 2 TB drive. I've seen schemes that put / on the ssd and /home on the hdd. I want something like /boot on the ssd and / on the hdd. Probably won't work. but how to get /root on the second drive?

I appreciate any and all help. I've been searching google, kali forums. Nothing like I really want it and thats the bootable portion of the os on the ssd for speedy boot

Put the root wherever you want. However you'll be seriously disappointed if you don't have it on the ssd. For a start, you need (a lot) more than just /boot to get an operating system up and running, and every program load will be much slower from spinning disk.
There are separate directories you can put on the disk if you want, but I always put root on the fastest device available.

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Add to what syg00 wrote: booting is a tiny fraction of the time normal people spend on a computer. Operations using the most time you want to be fast, so on the SSD. Reading and writing your own files to or from storage is a relatively small portion of total time, so makes less difference if not read or written from/to the fastest. Thus, all OS files on SSD, your own data on the HD, particularly video files, which though large, can only be utilized at the rate required to play or record them at appropriate speed.

I also have a "128GB" (really it's 111.8 GiB) SSD.
I have my complete system on it, / and /home.
I have set some folders (mostly media) aside to 2 more spinning hds i have in there.
that's enough to have the bulk of big data out of the way so that / doesn't fill up. that's how it works for me.
the decrease of bootup time and overall responsiveness is amazing.

(part bolded for emphasis only) Kali? You have read the sticky posts about Kali, and their own website about who and what it's targeted for, right?? It's designed for experienced Linux users, and even then for pentesting/security testing. They even recommend not using it as a 'daily driver'. Why do you NEED Kali?? It does nothing special that any other distro of Linux can't do...it just has the tools/setting already in place.

That said, you can go one of two ways:

• Simple: Let the installer suggest a disk partitioning scheme, and just change /home to be the 2TB drive.
• Slightly-harder: Disconnect 2TB hard drive, and do your installation. Power down, connect 2TB hard drive, and change the mount point in fstab for /home to be the new drive. You now have your OS booting from SSD, with your files and data on the slower spinning disk.

Either should be easy for an experienced Linux user.

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This is easy - don't futz around with parts of the OS here and parts of the OS there. Put the OS on the SSD, period. Put /home on the spinning drive. Done. Been running this config with 2 SSDs for years with zero issues. The only time I have had an issue (with Linux, OpenBSD) was a bad installer that doesn't understand multiple block devices.

Thank you! I knew there was a reason my scheme wouldn't fly, I just couldn't articulate it.

Thank you

This would be a total waste of the 128 GB SSD. It only takes 500MB-1GB for a /boot partition. What are you going to do with the other 127GB ? This is the fastest drive you have. Use it. You could have multiple distributions on a 128 GB SSD.

that surely is a sane scheme, but much of the speedup in boot time is then lost when a user logs in (and usually a graphical desktop is launched). my experience with a brand new SSD and some rather old spinning drives.

A hybrid "home" as some suggest for multibooting can help some with that: /home for user settings (.cache/ especially, .conf/, .local/, etc.) on the SSD, but the main user data (documents, spreadsheets, videos, pictures, etc.) on the rotating rust as subdirectory and/or subdirectories and/or symlinks in /home/ and/or /home/user.

Linux doesn't really care where resources are. There are some mechanisms in place that let you configure it at installation or on change. Most default installers just do common tasks. In many distro's you have an option to highly configure the install. You can select where the boot loader goes and where the common directories go and what size. /root location on most modern systems have no limit. Some older systems may have a problem on /boot at end of drive.

Agree but OP stated that was the hardware they had so...I am 100% SSD with NAS backup in case of failure so if an SSD fails, no worries