adding two new drives

[jpro6363]

I just installed Kubuntu this is my first Linux computer so I am brand new. I have my OS on two 80 GB hard drives setup as an RAID 0 Volume. I have two 500 GB drives that i want to add for storage "I got at Fry's Electronics today for 39 each". I have no idea how or even if I can add these.

Please help,

Thanks in advance!!!

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

Sorry, about my system:
Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid."Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
Platform version 4.4.5(kde4.4.5)

Grub version 0.97.29ubuntu60
Grub unified bootloader legacy version

Intel E8500 3.16 GHz
8 GB DDR 3 1600
Two 80GB hard drives as RAID 0

Below drive seen in BOIS but nithya OS
Two 500GB SATA Drives
One IDE 160 GB (not seen)
One usb 40 GB drive (not seen)

[vinnywright]

Re: adding two new drives

if the drives are brand new they likely don't have a partition table yet and cant be used post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

.....thats a lower case L
if thats the case you nead to give them at least 1 partition or more .........the eseyest way I think would be to install Gparted and use that.

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

Re: adding two new drives

It's likely these new drives are faster and have other benefits over your old IDE drives. You might consider doing a fresh install to one of them (upgrading to grub2 in the process) and relegate the old drives to backups.

You now have a ton of storage available so planning it's use well in advance can save a bunch of headaches. Moving partitions and data around is possible but time-consuming and dangerous so you're much better off with a good plan. A lot will depend on how critical your "mission" is. Are you just playing around and surfing with web or does your job depend on your computer? If you're planning on a lot of video processing, you'll need to maximize storage space for it. If you planning on installing every program under the sun you'll want large install partitions. You'll get 500 different ideas on drive usage from the users on here, but here's my suggestions:

Decide on what you need and what you might want in the near future: With this much space, why not create some space for a backup install and maybe one or two more installs to play with? How about backup space for your personal data?

RAID0 is way faster than non-RAID setups and RAID1 is the easiest way to duplicate important data. Plan your RAID partitions well and you'll have an easier time of it. I highly recommend linux software (mdadm) RAID over any hardware RAID for a couple reasons: software RAID is more controllable at the user level without continuous rebooting, software RAID is not system dependent - meaning if your mobo dies and you've used hardware/BIOS RAID I hope you can replace it with the exact same mobo and you remember your exact settings!

Using any tool (fdisk if you're comfortable with the command line, gparted if you prefer a GUI) and create your layout. Then do a fresh install. If you're installing to a linux RAID you'll need to use the "Aleternate Install" CD. This will recognize your software RAID partitions and allow you to install to them easily.

Suggestions on sizes and layout:

swap - divide your swap across both drives. Then if you use the swap space it acts just like a RAID (if setup correctly).

/home - should always be a separate partition. Not a bad idea to use RAID0 here, if you do full backups.

Space for installs: I generally use 12gb as my base install partition size. This seems to be enough for plenty of software with room to spare. Use 8 to 16gb. Have at least one extra install partition for backup and/or upgrade purposes.

I won't go into a detailed layout suggestion without knowing what your thoughts are on this. Bascially, it can be as simply or as complicated as you want. Have no fear, once this is setup the way you want it'll all work like magic!

[wizard10000]

Re: adding two new drives

oshunluvr nailed it

First, unless you've got a hardware RAID controller (unlikely, since they're kinda expensive) what you've got is called fakeraid and is not well supported by Linux.

Just by virtue of platter density a single 500gb drive will normally be faster than a pair of striped 80gb drives. Also, a RAID0 array adds at least one additional point of failure to your disk subsystem - if *either* drive fails you've lost your data.

Some years ago when I was younger and much more foolish I did a RAID5 array on my desktop PC with three 9gb 10,000 rpm SCSI drives and a fairly expensive Adaptec RAID controller. Got a little low on disk space so I bought a Hitachi 40gb IDE drive, which ran considerably faster than the array did. In terms of raw disk throughput the RAID array won, but considering that a three-drive RAID array has three times the track-to-track latency of a single drive and that most desktop PCs are serving up lotsa itty bitty files the single IDE drive was a fair bit faster than my very expensive 10,000 rpm SCSI array.

I sold the array on eBay back in 2001.

[TheBigAmbulance]

Re: adding two new drives

What I've done is taken the two drives and created a logical volume creating a 1 Tb "logical" drive. I then rsync to an external 1 tb drive for a backup.

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

Thanks to everyone, but I still don't know how to set these drives so they can be seen by my computer.. Do i need to start over? I have looked at deleting the RAID Volume and starting over as all my data is backed up to a Windows Ultimate computer I host my web-site and HTTP Server on. "its just for family www.JasonProcell.com" Again thanks for everyone help! One day I will learn this, I do have a couple of Linux Administration "Red Hat" books here I have been reading. The best thing about Linux and what makes me REALLY want to learn is the GREAT community of people working together to make it the BEST OS out there!

Thanks to everyone!!!!

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

Also I thought I had my System Specs setup to show on my post but I guess I didn't. Where do I set that up at?

[oshunluvr]

Re: adding two new drives

Profile > Forum Profile Information > Signature


Oh, and don't forget the pic of your significant other!

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

Thanks!

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

How about a picture of me and Jessica Simpson?

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

where's my picture?

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

OK I'm getting side tracked, I still don't know how to make these drives accessible :-/

[dibl]

Re: adding two new drives

OK I'm getting side tracked, I still don't know how to make these drives accessible :-/

1. Verify they are correctly connected and showing in your BIOS.
2. Boot a Parted Magic, or GParted, or Ubuntu, or some Live CD that has Parted on it.
3. Using Parted, Device > New Partition Table > Type=MS-DOS (do that for each drive).
4. Still with Parted, for each drive, click in unallocated space and make however many partitions you need, and make the filesystem (ext4 recommended).
5. Shutdown, remove the Live CD, and boot Kubuntu.
6. With terminal, identify the drives as seen by Kubuntu:

sudo fdisk -lu

and

sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o -list

7. Make new mount points, one for each partition (let's assume you made each drive a single partition):

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/firstnewdrive

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/secondnewdrive

8. With your terminal window open so you can cut & paste, Alt-F2 "kdesudo kate", open /etc/fstab for editing, and carefully add two lines to mount the new drives/partitions. Use the UUID number. For example, one new line might look similar to this:

UUID=82fffe8d-a8b1-49f7-afce-6ff01bc544bf   /mnt/firstnewdrive    ext4     auto,users,rw,exec   0  0

9. After the edited /etc/fstab is saved, mount the drives with

sudo mount -a

10. Verify you have the expected result with

sudo mount

Finally, pour a cold one and don't forget to crack your knuckles before drinking it.


Tomorrow, you'll want to know how to make directories on the new drives, with user permissions. We can deal with that then.

[jpro6363]

Re: adding two new drives

I have looked everywhere and everything I see says to go to system settings, advanced tab, Disk & Filesystems. I have no Disk & Filesystems:-/ under the Advanced Tab.