How to add second sata drive and extend /home to it?
 

Hi all

Running FC6 64bit with one Sata 400GB hard drive.

Getting another 500GB hard drive next week that I want to add. On the existing hard drive it is setup to dual boot windows, so has ntfs partition (sda1), /boot partition (sda2), / partition (sda3), extended (sda4), linux-swap partition (sda5), and a /home partition (sda6). Ext3 filesystem

I want to add the second sata and have it mounted in someway that it just adds to the capacity of the /home partition and the users don't know any different, its transparent to them that I have added it. They just see they have more space to utilise.

So I presume the drive will show up something like sdb. If I set the file system as ext3 and partition the whole drive as /home would this work or just cause a conflict.

Maybe I should be doing some raid setup, another thing I actually have never done but keen to learn.

I have a thing with even numbers so will be doing a Fedora 8 fresh install in a month or so.

Any help or comments on this will be muchly appreciated.

Cheers

Gimmee (I don't want anything thats just my nickname) :):)

Is your home on an LVM partition? If so you can add a new drive to the LVM so you won't even notice it's there except for the increase in size. I'll look up the tool for you

system-config-lvm

LVM is designed for things like this.

Else just copy /home to the new disk and mount that at /home. Reuse the old space as something else.
Maybe have a look at unionfs - another (non-LVM) option.

Hi billymayday

I actually dont know if the /home is on a LVM. I just did the partitions in the installation phase of FC6 but dont remember anything about that. Gparted doesnt say anything about lvm so maybe I didnt, argghhh.

Hi there

Logical Volume Management shows Un-Initialized Disk Entry on each partition so I guess I missed the boat on that on.

Cheers

Why not do what syg00 suggests, and move to lvm when you upgrade to F8 - or better still, go straight to F8

Yeah I think you right on that, will do that LVM when I goto F8. Will take your suggestion and copy /home to the 500GB and remount the ole 400GB under /media/something in the meantime. Didn't even know about lvm and unionfs, just a never ending learning curve isn't it.

Really looking forward to trying F8, we had a good run on FC6 64bit once I had it set up and it has been good to carve out some good linux learning on. The windows oriented family have generally survived well although I am finding it a bit easier now, just a litlle bit more than a little, when I get grilled on any problems that pop up. Haha.

Thanks again

Cheers

Gimmee :):)