[NTLUG:Discuss] Adding new hard drive

[mike]

Wayne, 

Here's how I'd try this:  (read the comments coming from others on this 
method first)  also this is not specific steps.. but milestones to achieve 
this type conversion.

1. physically install the new drive on hdb (booting into a root partition on 
the 2nd, 3rd drive is very possible.. the only limitation i've seen is only 
the first 4 drives on a SCSI system)

2. booting from the install CD rom, setup another redhat 7.3 system on hdb
 	a. split up the drive with your preferred partitions (/home, /var, etc..)
	    (at this step write down which partition is what...
		hdb5=home
		hdb6=var
		hdb3=win
		....etc
	b. mount hdax (the one with  the / partition on the version you want to 
keep)  as /mnt/oldredhat
	c. when you get to the 'install bootloader' section of the red hat install.. 
make sure that you have linux options for both hda and hdb.  I would put this 
on floppy only to ensure you don't erase your old lilo.  don't proceed until 
you can boot into both sessions from floppy. 

3. log into the 'new' red hat on hdb as 'root'

4. copy the branches from the old system into the new system. (be carefull on 
 the cp command to keep the owner & permissions the same... i could tell 
you.. but you'd be better doing the 'man cp' command and learning it 
yourself.) 

5. after you've finished getting your 'stuff' off the old drive, edit the 
fstab on the new system and remove the line with /mnt/oldredhat system on it. 

6. install whatever grandfather system you need to on hda. (leave the /boot 
partition there)

7. after you have your grandfather system in place, run lilo install to be 
able to menu boot to either windows or linux as you need to

8. you can also edit fstab to include the windows partition in your tree.  if 
you will be gettingonline, note that linux leaves windows partitions world 
writable by default.. so you are open to cracks by placing this in a default 
location (such as /mnt/windows or /mnt/c, etc.)

OK.. now read whatever else I've forgotten to tell you to update.. I've never 
tried this method.  

Comments anyone?



On Thursday 08 August 2002 02:45 pm, you wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I have some questions about adding a new hard drive.
>
> When I installed RH 7.3 on this box, I had only about 2 Gigs of space to
> do it in.  I have bought a 40 Gig drive I'm installing on this machine
> and don't really want to have to start over with everything.
>
> I have a CDRom burner on the machine and have gotten X-CD-Roast set up,
> although it hasn't been tested.  I only have about 26 Megs of drive
> space left for the image files (not enough to do backups?) and need to
> know a few things.
>
> 1.  What's the best way to go about adding this drive?  Would it be best
> to back up the directories that contain my user info and configs and
> just reinstall the OS on the new drive and restore from the backups?  If
> so, which directories should I back up?
>
> 2.  Does the /boot partition HAVE to be on /dev/hda?  Can it be on
> /dev/hdb,  provided LILO knows where to find it?
>
> 3.  The last time I installed RH on this machine, I let Disk Druid
> select how it was set up.  It set up 2 partitions.../boot and / with
> everything else under /.  I've read some things suggesting that some of
> the directories should have their own partitions...such as /, /root,
> /usr, /tmp, /var and /swap, among others.  Disk Druid set them all up
> under one big partition the last time.  Should I let it do so again or
> set up different partitions for each?  I plan to either wipe out the
> existing partition on /dev/hda and use it as a Win98 partition, thereby
> segregating both O/S's to their own drives, or to give maybe 5 or 10
> Gigs of the secondary master to Win98, leaving what I have on /dev/hda
> and partitioning the rest of the new drive to Linux.
>
> If setting up separate partitions for the different directories is
> recommended, what sizes should the partitions be?  I understand /usr and
> possibly /home should have the vast majority of space allocated.
>
> I had run out of disk space and Evolution had a conniption fit.  When it
> couldn't write email to the drive, it gave up, returned an error (can't
> remember exactly what it was) and died.  When I rebooted and restarted
> Evolution, it kept wanting me to reset it up...reset the accounts.
> Fortunately, it remembered all the mail boxes and emails that were in
> there, but I had to set it up several different times.  I was beginning
> to wonder if it was going to keep asking me to reset up the servers and
> account info every time it fired up, but after 3 or 4 times (several as
> my normal user and once as root), it's regained its memory and seems to
> be working ok now (after I removed some RPM's I had installed to clear
> some space).  Gnome also forgot my desktop settings and defaulted them
> again.  It wouldn't let me set them back up until I had cleared some
> space on the drive...hence the need for the new drive.
>
> I knew I was going to have to do this anyway...so...now I get to learn
> this.  :)
>
> Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
>
> Wayne
>
>
>
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