LVM? fuse?... how to merge a 250gb and 160gb harddisks for the /home

frenchn00b · 05-13-2010, 08:56 AM

Hello

I have 2 harddisks for data, ie. /home.

How to merge them? they are empty for the moment. shall we use fuse for that? how can it be done at the installation of debian ?

acid_kewpie · 05-13-2010, 08:59 AM

No idea how you expect to use fuse for that. fuse itself is a framework for mounting dozens of different kinds of pseudo-filesystems.

But LVM, that's exactly what you need. Create LVM partitions on both, join them to a single PV and then create a LV on top of it for /home.

frenchn00b · 05-13-2010, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acid_kewpie

No idea how you expect to use fuse for that. fuse itself is a framework for mounting dozens of different kinds of pseudo-filesystems.

But LVM, that's exactly what you need. Create LVM partitions on both, join them to a single PV and then create a LV on top of it for /home.

OK, I have 5 hardware harddisks, and would like to merge them all into a main partition.

shall I use raid software with LVM?

how to configure that at the installation (no link to url please, i googled hard alreadz)

syg00 · 05-13-2010, 09:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acid_kewpie

... join them to a single PV and then create a LV on top of it for /home.

s/PV/VG/

frenchn00b · 05-13-2010, 09:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

s/PV/VG/

OK, I try it...

But is it not better with raid. Some says that raid is good too, for backing up the disks and more secured for teh data?

alli_yas · 05-14-2010, 03:57 AM

Quote:

Some says that raid is good too, for backing up the disks and more secured for teh data?

RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks

Now you get hardware raid controllers which are devices made to manage RAID and you also get software raid controllers in Linux; which can also perform RAID for you.

There are four commonly used RAID levels:

RAID 0 - This is also referred to as a stripe where data is written across all the disks you have - the downside is that if one of your disks fails you basically lose all your data

RAID 1 - This is for TWO disks ONLY. It is a perfect mirror where data gets written to one disk and written again to the other disk (hence its called a mirror) - Disadvantage is that you lose 1 disk worth of space

RAID 1/0 & 0/1: Striped Mirror/Mirrored Stripe; in this setup for and even number of disks (4 minimum); data is striped across half the disks and then mirrored to the other half. Disadvantage is that you lose half of your disks worth of disk space

RAID 5: Stripe with Parity - for 3 disks or more; parity data is written to every disk; so that if a disk fails; you can insert a new one and the parity on the other disks will rebuild your data. Disadvantages here include losing a disks worth of space as well as the fact that if you have more than one drive failing; your data will be lost.

So as you can see above - RAID is not the easiest concept in the world to understand. And bear in mind I haven't even talked about speed of data access in the above.

I think the information you have provided thus far is a bit too generic; if you can provide specific information around:

1. What type of system are you installing? Is it for personal use or for commercial use?
2. How critical is your data? What would happen if it were lost?
3. What's more important to you - data safety or speed of access?
4. What type of applications will be reading/writing to the drives? Are they more read intensive or write intensive?

Provide the above and I'm sure you'll get a bit more specific information on the route to follow with your endeavours.

Cheers
Yas