multiple hdd for linux?

[broshiggie]

Ok some background info..

- 0 linux experience
- just bought a crappy pc with plans to turn it into a file server
- currently have a 120gb hdd in there
- installed redhat 9, it is functioning just fine
- already loaded some files onto the fserve (so i would prefer not to re-format the drive)

I have another 120 gb hdd on my main computer and a spare 40gb one. I want to move the 120 gb to the file server and put in the 40 gb one. To do that here is what i THINK i have to do (and what i am confused about):

- format 120 gb hdd (how do i format into linux file system?)
- replace 120 gb w/ 40 gb
- reinstall windows on main pc
- put scavenged 120 gb drive into file server

And from here i am lost... will linux automatically detect the new hdd? The IDE controller card i am using is NOT raid. I tried browsing around the files using Konquerer and i could not discern any drive structure (e.g. C:, D:, E: in windows) so i do not know how the extra hdd will appear in the system? Will linux just treat both hdd as one large hard drive as far as the front end is concerned (not saying it would be like a raid array, but it would just combine the space into one disk drive).

I hope i do not have to do a reinstall of Redhat and format the system again... could anyone with linux experience help me out w/ this?

(i searched for linux hdd, linux multiple hard drive and found nothing, sorry if this has been asked before)

 

[Nothinman]

Linux will not combine the space of the two drives (well technically you can with software RAID but that would require a reinstall). Filesystems are mounted on directories not drive letters, so you will only see one filesystem hierarchy staring at the root or '/'.

The new drive should be ready to be used after you plug it in, as long as the IDE controller is detected properly and I assume you'll be putting it on the same controller that holds the current IDE drive. Once in Linux you can run 'dmesg | less' to read through the kernel log which will show it detecting the IDE controller and any detected drives like so:

ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SIS5513: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:02.5
SIS5513: chipset revision 0
SIS5513: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
SIS5513: SiS 962/963 MuTIOL IDE UDMA133 controller
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda😀MA, hdb😀MA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc😀MA, hdd😀MA
hda: HTS726060M9AT00, ATA DISK drive
Using anticipatory io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hdc: QSI CD-RW/DVD-ROM SBW242U, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: max request size: 1024KiB
hda: 117210240 sectors (60011 MB) w/7877KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(33)
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >

Generally they're named in the way they're plugged into the system, IDE 0 Master is hda, IDE 0 Slave is hdb, IDE 1 Master is hdc, etc.

Then you have to decide where in the filesystem you want the extra drive to appear, for random data I usually pick something like /mnt/data or /home and put my profile and personal data in my home directory.

To setup the new drive in Linux you would need to do the following:

A) partition the drive, use cfdisk to create atleast one partition
B) make a filesystem on the partition you just created, for ext3 you want to use the mke2fs command.
C) mount the partition where you want it, be carefull because you can mount multiple things in the same place so mounting the empty drive overtop of something important will cause confusion. Also the target directory must exist before you can mount something there, so you must create /mnt/data before attempting to mount the drive there.
D) edit /etc/fstab to make the mount point permanent, there's some in there already so you should just have to copy the line and change the device and target entries.

That's assuming you don't want to save anything on the disk, if you want to save any data from it you'll need to mount it and copy the data off before you repartition and create the new filesystem.