i have 2 40G WG ATA hard drives and i would like to try and RAID them up on a debian install. i am very inexperianced with linux fdisk and i have no clue how to make a raid with those 2 disks so i can make the system install to 1 80G drive.

sujestions, pointers, etc. all welcome

If these drives are IDE (esp if connect via exp card) you might have to set them up first using major/minor inodes -- this only applies if you can't mount them -- IF YOU CAN MOUNT THEM SKIP THIS PART -- To set them up type 'cat /proc/partitions' it shuld read with 2.6.x kernel major/minor/blocks/name, for ex
'3 2 058086083 hda1'
take the paritions you want, copy the major and minor block numbers and type this in: 'mknod /dev/[NAME] [major] [minor]'


NEXT PART HERE.
-------------------------
assuming the first partition is /dev/hda1 and the second is /dev/hdb1 and you want a linear array:

apt-get update & apt-get install raidtools & hdparm -d1 /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb1; #get raid tools and turn on DMA or be forever slow

edit /etc/raidtab with your favorite text editor (vim!) make it read: (you should have a folder /dev/md0)

raiddev /dev/md0
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 1
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 32
device /dev/hda1
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdb1
raid-disk 1

issue command "mkraid /dev/md0" done;

-melazyboy

might not need to specify chunk size on linear (<lvl(3)) array sry -- coulden't hurt unless raidtools refuses it though.