Topic: 2 hopefully easy questions

[Dr. Strange]

I am new to SME 5.5 and I just recently installed it on a computer with two hard drive a 6 gb and a 10 gb. I have two questions.

Does SME recognize both hard drives giving me a total of 16 gb of storage, If yes does it show up as one big drive like a volume or as two drives and I have not figure out how to switch between the two?

And how do I tell exactly how much space I have left on the Hard drive(s)?

[Henrik Andreasen]

Dr. Strange wrote:

>Does SME recognize both hard drives giving me a total of 16 gb of storage,
> If yes does it show up as one big drive like a volume or as two drives and I have
> not figure out how to switch between the two?

As default SME will only use one hard drive, so you wont get 16 GB of storage, but only 6 GB if you installed SME on the 6 GB drive or 10 GB if you installed it on that.
You also only get 6 GB of storage, if you selected the RAID install btw.

> And how do I tell exactly how much space I have left on the Hard drive(s)?

Can’t remember the command for it in the console, but PHPSysInfo (phpsysinfo.sourceforge.net) shows how big your hard drive is, how much of it is used and how much free space there is on it

[Chris Meredith]

try
df -h
for free space
du -h
For used space.

[Dave]

> As default SME will only use one hard drive, ...

So why the dire warnings that SME install will vape all the disks in a machine? If it's only going to install on one which one is it going to choose? Does the person running the install get a choice?

I had to jumped through a number of hoops to stop this arrogant behaviour so I could try out/play with 5.5 without loseing the machine from it's current (part time) use.

I guess the use of "zerombr yes" and "clearpart --all" implies it goes for the first disk it finds but I've not seen anything to say that is waht those commands do.

Cheers
Dave.

[Ray Mitchell]

I'm no expert on this, but references in these forums state that the Linux instal process does not specifically define what happens to a second hard drive during the installation process, therefore it's an unsure thing to do.

As far as having two drives it seems like it is better to instal sme with only one drive connected and then connect the second drive later.
There are references in the forums on how to do this, just do a search.

Hope this helps
Ray Mitchell

[kirstyk]

I upgraded from 5.1.2 to 5.5 and had 2 drives in, after the install the first was used for boot (a partition of 15mb)
and all the rest on the second. I havent yet discovered wether I can create a second partition to use the remander of the first drive.

[Dr. Strange]

Is there a way I can use the second hard drive for storage with an IBAY or something or is it just taking up space???  (sorry I am not too clear)

[Dave]

> I'm no expert on this, but references in these forums state that the Linux
> instal process does not specifically define what happens to a second
> hard drive during the installation process, therefore it's an unsure thing
> to do.

Good enough for the dire warnings... Though that probably only applies with the use of "zerombr yes" and "clearpart --all". I edited the install.cfg file to "zerombr no" "clearpart --linux" and "lilo --location partition --linear" to make it only use pre-existing linux partitions.  This enabled me to install SME onto the second hard drive in the box whilst keeping my orginal boot manager, OS and data on the first HD.

Why SME install can't offer this as an option I don't know. By all means make the default the "zap everything", as that is what most people will want and if/when I do setup SME in anger it will be the route I take.

> As far as having two drives it seems like it is better to instal sme with
> only one drive connected and then connect the second drive later.

Well yes expecte you end up with two drives with valid MBRs though I guess it doesn't look at the second drive. But once lilo is into the MBR how do you get a boot manager  on the first disc boot SME from the second?

> There are references in the forums on how to do this, just do a search.

Along with my fairly recent post on editing install.cfg as well.  B-)

Cheers
Dave.

[Dave]

> Is there a way I can use the second hard drive for storage with an IBAY
> or something or is it just taking up space???  

I should imagine so. Follow the normal procedure for adding drives/partitions, in addition it probably requires a custom template to ensure that the fstab entry for it remains in tact if you adjust  the system with the automatics.

Cheers
Dave.

[Ray Mitchell]

Dear Dr Strange
I searched for "adding a second hard drive" and found
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=4416.msg15333#msg15333

I also searched for "second hard drive" and found

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=4416.msg15333#msg15333

and there were lots more search results, just a matter of reading and choosing what you want

There are a lot of questions that have already been answered in these forums. Don't limit your search to the last 30 days either.
Hope this helps
Regards
Ray Mitchell