I have two hard drives (sda=80G, sdb=2T) on a machine that I would like to use. Haven't been able to find any clear tutorials yet.

Used mainly as a file server, I also have some other things going on...
1. /home : file storage big time!
2. web server w/database setup (testing only not available to outside)
3. ftp (considering)
4. future ideas??? don't know yet

Are there any intuitive "how to" articles that explain how to effectively use the hard drives or should I just use the 2T and forgo the 80G???

Can this be done through the installation program or will I have to do something after initial install?

I would set up the first drive as the root filesystem (the "system disk", so to speak).
Probably with two partitions: a Linux filesystem, to be mounted as "/", and a swap partition.

Some people will create a (relatively small) boot partition as well, but I don't usually bother.

The second disk can be used as your data disk. Without thinking too deeply about it, I would use the whole disk as one partition, to be mounted as "/home". Depending on your needs, however, a few extra partitions may be appropriate--you certainly have the space. Maybe a separate partition for the web server data, to be mounted wherever you want the data to appear.

Just my $0.02... Others may have more concrete suggestions. I certainly wouldn't forego the first disk; it's simply a great idea to have a separate system disk, and 80GB is more than sufficient.

Personally, I would be tempted use the 80GB disk as / and include the /home partition on it also -- so at install time just use the 80GB disk. Then I would mount the 2T under something like /data and use simlinks to it anywhere where I wanted to use its storage. The reason I would not use the 2TB as /home is that sometimes settings and the like are stored in /home and to my mind it's easier to use the 2TB drive for just "pure" data without having to worry about hidden settings files and the like.
Well, OK, no I would probably use ~30GB of the 80TB drive as / then use the remaining ~50GB as /home so that I could reinstall the OS without having to reconfigure things but this approach means potentially losing 10-20GB of space from / as in reality probably only between 7 and 20GB will be used but I think 20GB is a bit small for / if you're going to start installing a lot of things.

My own desktop is using about 16GB of a 30GB partition on a 60GB SSD as /; a 240GB mounted as /home, with about 128GB used and a 3TB HDD mounted as /data.

FWIW, I'd put /boot, /, and swap partitions on the 80 GB drive; one or more data partitions on the 2 TB drive, and symlink anything you want to appear in your /home directory.

Hey Everyone! Thanks for the responses. I'll have to work on this a little more. It seems I'm only able to work with one drive during the installation process. I've not seen anywhere that allows me to setup /home on the second drive. Would that be through the advanced setup? Anyways, I had to get everything going--have other lab computers to contend with. So currently, everything is on the 2TB. However, I do want to solve this problem.

SIDE NOTE: That's what frustrates me about LINUX. I generally setup the server and leave it be. I don't have to keep babysitting it, so I forget how to do certain things and/or don't spend a lot of time researching. Would love to know LINUX a lot better, just don't have many reasons to keep my hands in it. :-)

I will have the end of the year to return to this again (shutdown) and will probably purchase an SSD for the root file system.

Just need the steps to setup both drives during installation.


Thanks again guys,

SSD is great for root - all my desktops are set up this way. Applications start fast.
For a server SSD does not add any benefits, all programs are started at boot time.

The installer has a manual partitioning option where you can setup the drives/partitions as desired.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/