Topic: Adding hard disks and I-Bays

[D.Garrett.]

I was wondering if you could help me with a problem I have.

I have E-Smith 5.1.2 installed on a 20gb drive. No probs.
I need more space though and have two 60gb IBM drives to add.

I'm just a newbie, but have managed to add, partition (ext2) and mount the drives to load to folders in a temp i-bay. I did chmod the folders and they work fine through the i-bays.

This is fine for a fixed purpose, two 60gig folders in one i-bay. This is not really what I need though.

I wanted to be able to create many i-bays in each of the new drives and manage them with the server manager as normal.

How would I go about this and where can they be mounted to allow the server manager to control them as normal I-Bays?

All this could be avoided if E-Smith allowed the use of Raid 0, I would just make one big array....

Thank-you for any help you may offer.

D.G.

[Chaloner Hale]

Mount it as /home/e-smith/files/ibays.

Chaloner Hale

[D.Garrett.]

Won't I get a conflict if I mount both extra drives at the same mount point?

Remember there are two IBM 60 gb drives to add to the existing 20gb drive, which has the install on it.

[Chaloner Hale]

You can only mount one drive at any one mount point. Either get a larger drive, or use raid.

Chaloner Hale

[John Crisp]

Sorry, but there is a way to mount extra drives and use them for more -bays.

Unfortunately, I have done it myself, but can't remember how to do it.

Just had a search in the forums - look for 'Mounting new hard drives' Make sure you choose 'All dates' when searching.

The answers are all there. I'm no genius but I made it work !


B. Rgds
John

[D.Garrett]

Thanks for the help guys

The solution I came up with was to install E-Smith 5.1.2 on a 2gb drive /dev/hda.

I then added two 60gb drives and made primary partitions on them, /dev/hdb1 and /dev/hdc1 .

I made a striped array (raid 0) with the two drives, /dev/hdb1 + /dev/hdc1 = /dev/md0 .

To finish off, I mounted /dev/md0 at /home/e-smith/files/ibays . Manage as usual from server-manager, sweet!

If you want to add a bit more to the mod, like I did. Use hdparm (I used version 4-6.2) to trick it up a bit.

I'm getting an Avg buffered disk read of 41Mb/s from the 120Gb array. Any good?

It has worked out well and is a cheap solution for people who need lots of space for the I-Bays, IMHO.

Note: Have a good back-up plan and stick to it. Raid 0 + disk failure = bye bye I-Bays.

[Adrian Brown]

Hi

I want to do the same as you...but i know very little about linux in general. Im glad you have a solution and i was wondering if you could talk me through it. I have 2X 6gb drives that i want to add to an existing server built on a 7gb drive. I want them setup exactly as you have so i can set different ibays with different policies etc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Kees Blokland]

Hi,

Is this any help to you? This sytem has been working very well for me, I've got a system with 4 ide-disks.

have fun..

kees