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<TITLE>RE: [NTLUG:Discuss] Adding new hard drive</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Regarding partitioning:</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I have spoken with a number of people in the past, and have yet to find any compelling reason for having multiple partitions on a system. I am basically guessing, but I think the whole partitioning thing was valid when drive sizes were measured in megs, not gigs. I just run one / partition on all our SGI and linux boxes (except the ftp server), and have never had any problems. You can easily run into a brick wall if you set up partitions without a look into the future.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">That being said...</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I find it comforting to put the /usr (or /home) on a different</FONT><I> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">drive</FONT></I><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"> than the rest of the os. The same would apply if you have any /pub like partitions for ftp or web serving. I like to keep the os install as pristine as possible, and let the users thrash on another drives.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">So, you might want to keep the drive you have in the system where it is, and install your new hard drive for use as the /usr partition.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">If this is just a hobby/utility Linux box, and your main os is still Windows (please, no attacks...), then I would just keep one drive for Windows and the second drive for Linux.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">During installs, I have never let Disk Druid do it's own thing. IMHO, it is best to define your own parameters, and make sure Disk Druid isn't doing something stupid. Actually, if you want to, back everything up and play around with fdisk some. The command line is still your friend. :></FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">HTH, and good luck,</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Monty</FONT>
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<P><A NAME="_MailData"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">-----Original Message-----</FONT></A>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">From: Wayne Dahl [SMTP:w.dahl4@verizon.net]</FONT></B>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Sent: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Thursday, August 08, 2002 2:46 PM</FONT>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">To: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">NTLUG Discussions</FONT>
<BR><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Subject: </FONT></B> <FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">[NTLUG:Discuss] Adding new hard drive</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Hi all. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I have some questions about adding a new hard drive. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">When I installed RH 7.3 on this box, I had only about 2 Gigs of space to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">do it in. I have bought a 40 Gig drive I'm installing on this machine</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">and don't really want to have to start over with everything. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I have a CDRom burner on the machine and have gotten X-CD-Roast set up,</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">although it hasn't been tested. I only have about 26 Megs of drive</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">space left for the image files (not enough to do backups?) and need to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">know a few things. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">1. What's the best way to go about adding this drive? Would it be best</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">to back up the directories that contain my user info and configs and</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">just reinstall the OS on the new drive and restore from the backups? If</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">so, which directories should I back up? </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">2. Does the /boot partition HAVE to be on /dev/hda? Can it be on</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">/dev/hdb, provided LILO knows where to find it? </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">3. The last time I installed RH on this machine, I let Disk Druid</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">select how it was set up. It set up 2 partitions.../boot and / with</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">everything else under /. I've read some things suggesting that some of</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">the directories should have their own partitions...such as /, /root,</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">/usr, /tmp, /var and /swap, among others. Disk Druid set them all up</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">under one big partition the last time. Should I let it do so again or</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">set up different partitions for each? I plan to either wipe out the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">existing partition on /dev/hda and use it as a Win98 partition, thereby</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">segregating both O/S's to their own drives, or to give maybe 5 or 10</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Gigs of the secondary master to Win98, leaving what I have on /dev/hda</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">and partitioning the rest of the new drive to Linux. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">If setting up separate partitions for the different directories is</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">recommended, what sizes should the partitions be? I understand /usr and</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">possibly /home should have the vast majority of space allocated. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I had run out of disk space and Evolution had a conniption fit. When it</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">couldn't write email to the drive, it gave up, returned an error (can't</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">remember exactly what it was) and died. When I rebooted and restarted</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Evolution, it kept wanting me to reset it up...reset the accounts. </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Fortunately, it remembered all the mail boxes and emails that were in</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">there, but I had to set it up several different times. I was beginning</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">to wonder if it was going to keep asking me to reset up the servers and</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">account info every time it fired up, but after 3 or 4 times (several as</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">my normal user and once as root), it's regained its memory and seems to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">be working ok now (after I removed some RPM's I had installed to clear</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">some space). Gnome also forgot my desktop settings and defaulted them</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">again. It wouldn't let me set them back up until I had cleared some</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">space on the drive...hence the need for the new drive. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I knew I was going to have to do this anyway...so...now I get to learn</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">this. :) </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Thanks in advance for your thoughts. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Wayne </FONT>
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