How to format and partition exsiting hard disk

vlsi · 04-02-2008, 10:12 PM

Dear All,

I have a Linux server with RHEL 4 installed. There are 6 hard disk in total, but they are not partitioned and mounted individually. 'df -k' output are below.

Code:

[root@lnx0 dev]# df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                     843889840  34059216 766963528   5% /
/dev/sda1               101086     22850     73017  24% /boot
none                   1544820         0   1544820   0% /dev/shm

'cat /etc/fstab' output are

Code:

[root@lnx0 dev]# cat /etc/fstab
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda                /media/cdrom            auto    pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/fd0                /media/floppy           auto    pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

I can only see this with 'fdisk -l, 'ls /dev/sd*' and 'ls /dev/hd*'

Code:

[root@lnx0 dev]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 880.1 GB, 880174694400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 107008 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14      107008   859437337+  8e  Linux LVM
[root@lnx0 dev]# ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2
[root@lnx0 dev]# ls /dev/hd*
/dev/hda

I am not able to see each hard disk'name. All hard disks are mappered to one - /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00. I want to partition and mount all the hard disks individually for better management. Please advise!

Thanks a lot in advance.
vlsi

Jerre Cope · 04-02-2008, 10:44 PM

Some would argue that your drives are already managed in the best way with the Logical Volume Manager. I've tended not to use it because I like to use Software Raid and I haven't bothered to learn the command-line tools to troubleshoot LVM if it breaks. However, it probably would make management simpler. You should be able to use an LVM gui to remove drives from the Logical volume. At that point you could mount them such that each physical partition is one mount point.