Topic: Windows Harddrive + SME Server

[Dave]

Is it possible to take a harddrive formated in Windows 2000, and simply insert it into the machine with SME server installed.  I doubt that it's possible, but I'm just curious....

[ralph]

Hi Dave,

depending on the filesystem the win drive is formatted with it might work.
FAT does, NTFS will not do.

In case your drive is FAT, mount it ( manually or using fstab ).

curiosity killed the cat ;--->>

Ralph

[Nate]

Sure you can insert it into the SME machine.  But what do you want to do with the drive once it's inserted?  Access files?  Install SME server to it?

[Dave]

Access the same files that existed when it was running under Win2000 - Kind of a 'plug-n-play' type of thing...

[Joerg]

Hello guys.

Sorry for interrupting you two but i do have a simular question. By Installation default there is no change to add an second Drive, so the installation routine takes only the master drive and does the partitioning on it. Now the Question is ther any possibilty that i can add a second and a third disk, if so how i have to do that. I'm almost new in linux.
cheers Joerg

[Kees Blokland]

I wrote this for_my_own_use long ago, maybe it helps:

HOWTO add more diskspace to a e-smith server

Reason: because I have loads of small drives, and I wanted to see if it could be done. I wanted to add extra storage for ibays and users, because that’s where the storage is needed.

Part of the e-smith directory structure is as follows:

/home/e-smith/files/ibays  ( samba shares)
/home/e-smith/files/users

The main operating system lives on a 2 G harddisk. (Install e-smith on this disk
first before doing anything else. Do not make users or ibays yet.

To add disks I borrowed info from:  (www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/hardware/hd_add.html) in short:

Connect the disk(s) to you motherboard and look at dmesg |more
to see what the new disks are called. Mine were:

/dev/hdc and /dev/hdd   (/dev/hda would be the primary disk on the 1st ide connector. (IDE0))

Next you need to partition them. I choose a single partition per disk.

fdisk /dev/hdc     ( have a look at the above link for more details)
fdisk /dev/hdd

And create the partition with 'n'. Don't forget to write it to the disk!
Next make the filesystem:

mkfs /dev/hdc1
mkfs /dev/hdd1


This bit is likely unnecessary, but it’s how I did it..
Then make some directories under the /  ( on the original disk of course). These steps are probably not the cleverest, but this is how I worked it out. Any suggestions for improvements are welcome. I made 'ibays' and 'users'

mkdir users
mkdir ibays

copy the contents (should not be much) from  /home/e-smith/files/ibays/
to /ibays/

same for users..  ( you end up with  /home/e-smith/files/ibays/ibays, but
you have to keep the stuff in the original ibays somewhere, you can't (want)
keep the stuff in root.. think about it for a while..)

now use pico to edit /etc/fstab
my fstab now looked like this after editing:

LABEL=/       /                  ext2 defaults  1 1
LABEL=/boot   /boot                 ext2 defaults  1 2
/dev/hdc1     /home/e-smith/files/ibays    ext2 defaults  1 1
/dev/hdd1     /home/e-smith/files/users    ext2 defaults  1 1
/dev/cdrom    /mnt/cdrom           iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0      /mnt/floppy            auto noauto,owner 0 0
none          /proc                      proc   defaults   0 0
none              /dev/pts              devpts   gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/hda5     swap             swap  defaults   0 0


Do a mount -a
And bingo.. all is well.  Do a df to verify.
Manually copy the files in /ibays and /users to the right place.
rm the /ibays and /users directories

From the normal e-smith manager, create your users and ibays.

Do this only if you sort of understand the process. If this is all magic, don't try until you understand! On the other hand, there is no better way of learning than messing up things.

good luck.