several hard drives connected on install a good thing?

[Reurbo]

here is a question i've never thought of asking... i have 5 internal hard drives (a 60, 150, 300, 750, and 1500GB) and 1 external hard drive (a 1000GB). i am currently using Kubuntu 8.10 and after recent problems with it, i'm about to install Kubuntu 8.04.2.
everything is backup so no worries there, but my question is this.. is it better to have ALL my hard drives connected when installing the "new" operating system OR just the one hard drive that will be my "home" drive?

i am using my 750GB as my primary drive and the 1500GB hard drive as my My Documents. with Kubuntu 8.10 i got use to booting up my computer, logging in, opening Konsole, and using sudo to mount my 1500GB hard drive since it never would during the boot, but the others would (excluding the external hard drive which i only occasionally hookup to make backups on certain things).

any suggestions or advice on the matter is greatly appreciated.
thank you.

[Qqmike]

Re: several hard drives connected on install a good thing?

I don't see how it should matter. In theory.
Main thing is, set your hard drive to boot first from the drive you want it to boot from first. That drive will be hd0 = sda.

Now, if you have a mixture of SATA drives and IDE/PATA drives, then some folks have found that the installer may mess up the drive enumeration (sda, sdb, sdc, etc.).

In any case, why not try it? If it were me ...

I'd connect all the drives.
I'd format the main drive separately and before I install Kubuntu. I'd format that main drive using GParted Live CD, setting up any/all partitions I needed for Kubuntu (root, swap, /home). See NOTE below. Then, I'd run the Live Kubuntu CD installer, BUT before clicking on the "Install" icon, I'd use the Live CD session to explore the drives to see how they are being seen:
Open Konsole (in the Live Kubuntu CD session before installing).
Type
sudo fdisk -lu
and see your drives and make sure the drive enumeration (sda, sdb, etc.) makes sense.
For the heck of it, you might see how BIOS and GRUB sees those drives, too:
At Konsole
sudo grub
grub>geometry (hd0)
grub>geometry (hd1)
grub>geometry (hd2)
etc.
explore and know what your drives are called by BIOS and GRUB (hd0, hd1, etc.)
Make a note of these results.
Then exit out of Konsole.
Then click the Install icon, and install Kubuntu.


NOTE
When running GParted Live CD to partition/format the main HDD, you might want to explore your drives while in GParted.
Double click the Terminal icon in GParted, and use
sudo fdisk -lu
at that Terminal, to get your sda, sdb, sdc, etc.
Then close the Terminal (exit), return to GParted Live, and do the partitioning/formatting as usual.


=> It never hurts to know where you are and what the drives are named.