🚀 go-pugleaf

Matthias Weiss wrote<351944A1.52F@stud2.tuwien.ac.at>...
>Hi there...
>
>
>My 635Mb IDE HD is now running out of free capacity so I'm planing to
>add a second IDE HD. The 635Mb is conected to hda, the ATAPI CDRom Drive
>to hdc. What I want is that the 635Mb stays where it is, the second HD
>(2 to 5 years old, also IDE, 500 to 1000Mb space) pluged on hdc and the
>CDRom on hdd.


Why? I mean, CD-ROMs, being slower devices, should usually be used by
different hard disk controller than real hard drives.
IMHO you should make the other hard drive hdb, and leave the CD-ROM as it
is.

Set the jumpers of the drives so that your current drive is jumpered as
master (with a slave, if there's such setting) and the new (or used) drive
as a slave.
Boot your computer and setup (usually F2 or Alt-Esc) the cylinder / head /
sector per track settings (they are normally printed on the label of the
hard disk), or let the BIOS decide (AUTO feature, if supported by your
BIOS).
Linux can also detect second hard disk even when it is not set up in BIOS.

>
>So my questions:
>
>Does anyone have experiences with "second hand" harddisks? Where could
>occure problems??

I have experience with new harddisks only, but:

If anything can go wrong, it does. Back up (recursively) the contents of
/etc, /root and /home.

>
You didn't specify your other configuration, but (IMHO) used hard disk may
be adequate for home use. Expectable mileage may be short, or then not.

>Could you recommend special harddisks (fabrikat,type), what HD's not to
>buy???

Yes. Buy a new one. Manufacturer doesn't really matter.

>How do I have to reconfigurate my system so that linux recognises the
>new HD????????How do I have to change the lilo.config that the new drive
>is mounted at boottime????????


You don't have to change lilo.config.
In this phase you should make your /etc/fstab to look somewhat like:

/                          hda        ext2      default     1 1
/mnt/usr               hdb1        ext2      default     1 1
/mnt/cd                hdc        iso9660 ro,user    1 1

>
>How can I move existing datas (programs) from the old drive to the new
>one (and not crashing the system)?????????

After configuring /etc/fstab:

cd from-stuff
tar cf - . | (cd ../to-stuff; tar xvf -)

(Excerpt from "Running Linux" by Matt Welsh and Lar Kaufman, well worth
reading)

Check that everything you have in /usr, you have in /mnt/usr too.

In second phase you should edit your /etc/fstab to look like:

/                          hda        ext2      default     1 1
/usr                     hdb1        ext2      default     1 1
/mnt/cd                hdc        iso9660 ro,user    1 1

Reboot. The new filesystem is installed.
(You may have to do some symlinks to /usr tree anew)

>
>How would you split the 2 HD's in partitions????????

Leave the hda as is. The second disk (hdb in my schema) could be used for
/usr as a whole. If it is about 1Gb drive you could add a generous swap
partition.
Check the du of your /home and /var trees, if you have many users.

>Are there certain problems with 2 HD's?????????????

No. I have 3 HD's + CD-ROM, all IDE.
>
>
>thanx to everyone who can help me!!!!!!!!!
>
>
>matthias
You're welcome. All it takes is thinking. Draw a plan, make notes.
Don't Panic!     ;-)

Jukka-Pekka Kinnunen
jp dot kinnunen at pp dot inet dot fi

Matthias Weiss <e9217801@stud2.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
[...]
> Does anyone have experiences with "second hand" harddisks? Where could
> occure problems??
You said IDE.  Don't expect problems unless you want to worry about
a worn-out disk.  When you "make a filesystem" on the disk (mkfs is it?),
it has an option to check for bad blocks and, IIRC, to mark them bad
so they won't be used.  That still doesn't protect you from marginally
bad parts of the disk that only occasionally act bad.  Some (rich) folks
don't use disks that have been used a lot for more than about three years.
With home systems, I wouldn't worry about it.
> 
> Could you recommend special harddisks (fabrikat,type), what HD's not to
> buy???
No. All manufactures seem to put out good and bad disks at various times.
Some folks have their most- and least-favorite lists, but lists contradict
each other.
> 
> How do I have to reconfigurate my system so that linux recognises the
> new HD????????How do I have to change the lilo.config that the new drive
> is mounted at boottime????????
Ensure your old disk has it's "jumper" set to "master" and your new one
to "slave", per your owner's manual.  That's all you need to begin.
Boot up Linux off your old diskk or floppy and "cfdisk" (or fdisk)
should see the new disk and allow you to partition it. Then make 
"filesystems" on the partitions as needed using mkfs (?).  Then add
entries into your /etc/fstab file as desired.  (All this assumes you
just want to use your new disk for expansion, not a whole new OS, etc.)
> 
> How can I move existing datas (programs) from the old drive to the new
> one (and not crashing the system)?????????
Traditionally, tar is used. I've had some bad luck with moving
socket files. I'll use "cp -a" next time.  The only thing I know
to give serious problems in a move is that if you delete a
shared library that the OS needs, things will stop working.
The / partition must normally be copied, the copy edited so that
it will boot up OK, maybe LILO reconfigured and rerun for the
new boot, and then reboot to the new source.  It's all too 
complicated to explain briefly.  Many people have done it tho.
> 
> How would you split the 2 HD's in partitions????????
> 
> Are there certain problems with 2 HD's?????????????

I'd try to keep everything you need to run the OS on
one disk, so you don't increase the probablilty of a
disk problem from disabling you.  Or, better yet
put a complete bootable minimal Linux on one of your
first disk's 50 or so MB primary or logical partitions
to use as a rescue system to repair damage to the other
partition's software.

Matthias Weiss wrote:
> Does anyone have experiences with "second hand" harddisks? Where could
> occure problems??

I've got a second hand 200MB Seagate HD.  It hasn't given me any
problems under either dos or Linux that weren't my fault (playing around
with bios settings).

> Could you recommend special harddisks (fabrikat,type), what HD's not to
> buy???

Sorry, I can't help you there.  Hopefully someone else in this group can
tell you more.

> How do I have to reconfigurate my system so that linux recognises the
> new HD????????How do I have to change the lilo.config that the new drive
> is mounted at boottime????????

Linux will autodetect the drive without you doing anything (did for me,
anyway).  You won't have to adjust Lilo at all unless you want to boot
from a different drive.

However, if you want your new drive to be mounted at boot time (or any
time, really) you will have to adjust your /etc/fstab file (try `man
fstab' for docs).

> How can I move existing datas (programs) from the old drive to the new
> one (and not crashing the system)?????????

Why would the system crash?  Check out the various HOWTOs and other docs
(http://www.linux.org/ has links to online versions) for ways of
migrating files.  I can't tell you more as it depends on what you're
trying to move.

> How would you split the 2 HD's in partitions????????

What do you mean?  You can use fdisk to edit the partition tables, but
when it comes to how to arrange your partitions, that's up to you.  I
beleive there is a HOWTO on this (I don't have much experience with
designing partition schemes).

> Are there certain problems with 2 HD's?????????????

Only that they can fill up unexpectedly.  I have 3 HD's running in my
system without any problems.

Hmm, just remembered one thing...it seems that if the master HD goes to
sleep, you can't wake up the slave HD without first waking up the master
(2.0.33).  This is the only problem I had with multiple drives, but then
I was fiddling with the HD sleep parameters.  I guess that the kernel
should tickle the master before going for the slave drive when sleep
mode has been enabled.

Bill
-- 
Leave others their otherness

Matthias Weiss <e9217801@stud2.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
> Hi there...
> [snip] 
> Could you recommend special harddisks (fabrikat,type), what HD's not to
> buy???
> [snip]

Yes, you may want to be wary of Western Digital IDE hard drives.  They
are great drives.  But, some of them seem to have some problems when
connected to an IDE port with another manufacturer's drive.

I have fought this battle and it ain't a pretty sight.  The best thing
is if you have a WD hard drive to put the non-WD hard drive on the
other IDE port.  This caution applies equally to CD-ROM drives.  My
IDE CD-ROM will not work when connected on the same port as my WD
hard drive.
-- 

Arne W. Flones
flonesaw@nospamnetonecom.net
-- remove "nospam" for e-mail address --

In <87wwdcj3hn.fsf@longship.awf.com>, Arne W Flones <flonesaw@longship.awf.com> writes:
>Matthias Weiss <e9217801@stud2.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
>Yes, you may want to be wary of Western Digital IDE hard drives.  They
>are great drives.  But, some of them seem to have some problems when
>connected to an IDE port with another manufacturer's drive.
>
>I have fought this battle and it ain't a pretty sight.  The best thing
>is if you have a WD hard drive to put the non-WD hard drive on the
>other IDE port.  This caution applies equally to CD-ROM drives.  My
>IDE CD-ROM will not work when connected on the same port as my WD
>hard drive.
>-- 
When I made my Linux box I put an old WD 340Meg and a Mitsumi CDROM drive
on the IDE card and the results were that Caldera OpenLinux Lite installed
by RedHat would not recognize its CD when I tried to install it for a
replacement. Could this be the WD drive causing that?