Sorta future-proofing and partitioning help request
 

Hi gang,

Here's what's going on:

My current computer is finally starting to give me problems of the physical kind - usb ports working inconsistently is the main problem.

The system is 7 or 8 years old now, I build my own so that I know *exactly* what is in *my* system (and I get warranties for each component instead of a whole 'system' from some useless vendor). I've been building them for myself and friends since '98.

I try my best to put one together that is relatively easy on the wallet, yet will be 'good enough' for what I or my friends do with them for the next 7 or 8 years...what I believe is 'future proofing' to an extent.

I've always kept things pretty simple, installing a linux distro on a single HDD or SDD, on three partitions (/boot /home / ) and most times skipping a swap space (I've had them, but never noticed any difference between having one and not). I've always used LILO, as for me it just sems simpler to understand sorta, but am willing to give GPT a try if the new system and what I'm hoping to try and do with it makes it necessary.

Presently, where I live I'm now unfortunately forced to keep a surveillance system up. I've got myself three pretty decent AXIS cameras (P3225 LV, P3225 LV MkII, P3375 LVE) and have been using two of them for the past 8 months just fine.

My present system consists of:

ASUS M5A97 R2.0 MOBO
12GB 2666 RAM
AMD FX-8350 (socket AM3)
GeForce GTX 960
Creative Labs SB Audigy
Decent P/S but can't remember the brand ATM
1TB WD Black HDD holding Slackware 14.1 (x86_32, also holds the /boot for both drives)
250GB SDD holding Slackware 14.2 (x86_64)

Since I rarely boot into the Slackware 14.1 anymore, I pretty much simply use that large HDD to hold the video surveillance files until I've looked through them and deleted the ones I don't want to keep.

Now that Slackware is close to coming out with 15.0, I've been slowly gathering the parts for my new 'future proof' computer and to install that on. (I also do some distributed computing so have BOINC running 24/7 on this current system and will keep this one for specifically that and possibly continue to be a video file holder of the surveillance setup of mine...which leads me to my next questions further on...)

Here's what I am putting together to have a sort of future proof system again:

MSI MEG X570 UNIFY MOBO
32GB 3200MHz Corsair Vengeance RAM
2 x WD Black SN850 500GB NVMe SDD's
2TB WD Black HDD
1TB WD Black HDD
Decent Corsair P/S (750W)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (and a Noctua heatsink and fan for it)
I plan on taking the Nvidia GTX960 out of the old system and putting it in this one
(I have an *old* GT650 to put in the old system *if* it's actually needed)

Here's some of the things I'd like to do with this new setup and would sure appreciate some ideas/advice.

First: I'm pathetic at understanding networking. Simply an idiot and just have a hard time trying to understand enough to be able to do some of the things that look nice that I read about...since my old system I'd *like* to be able to use as the storage for my surveillance videos still, I'm not sure how to go about putting that old system on/through the router so my new system sees it and so that I can still see it in my single monitor while using my new system.

I'd also like to partition the 4 drives in this new system so that if I feel like it, be able to *very* simply install a second distro/OS (like one of the BSD's. I'll *NEVER* have windows on my computers ever again. win3.2 and W98 back in the day were two too many!) to just play with and test drive, so to speak.

So, with all this new 'space' with the SDD's and HDD's, how would I go about partitioning such a creature? Which drives would be best suited to my 'daily use' of mostly on and off the web constantly all day and night long (I'm disabled so I'm sitting at the computer 95% of my awake time), using VirtualBox to play an online RPG, maintaining (and building) a few programs for Slackware systems (I don't need to be a 'programmer' per se to do this, so I'm good to go, heh. I can't program one iota, btw, and barely can remember a few bash commands, :( oh well, life in the woods!), and playing my music a lot and reading a lot so a lot of downloading and uploading.

After reading this short-story (sorry), anyone care to throw out any ideas or advice?

You certainly made this very long and a little complicated, and I don't know what to say about other people's partitioning because I don't really know what data they are planning to have and use. I know you described some of it, but it's too much information so I find it hard to retain and contemplate.

Anyway, I don't see any backup plan in that scheme. Where are you going to keep your backups? Hard disks and SSDs die, you know.

That actually happened to me just a few days ago, I'm still reeling from the pain of the loss of a beloved one...

My 'backup' is a couple of 128GB flash drives that I keep the most important things on, such as the .mozilla with all my passwords and such, and another 64GB flash drive I use strictly for my music (of which I have 52GB of, heh). About once every month I backup onto these drives, so I feel confident enough about having my important stuff safe on me.

As for the partitioning, I was just curious how to set it up on the HDD's and SDD's I'll have in the new system so that I can have my normal /boot, /home, and /, but also have a nice sized partition to use as a testing ground for other OS's/distro's.

Also, if I plug my old system into my router, will I be able to see it on my new system and get into the files and such as I do with this old system from the SDD to the HDD to look at the video surveillance. Or is there more to it when going from one computer to another via a router?

Accessing files over a network is different than accessing them from an external drive, I've done it before but can't remember what exactly I did, but you will have to use the other computers URL in some way or other.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...hines-over-lan

I think I'm way over-thinking this. I wonder how much easier it would be to just have a KVM switch and all I need to do is hit a button on the little box.

Anyway, thanks for looking and at least giving it a shot and your advice. It's much appreciated.

You can also use VNC. It's not very nice remotely because of the latency, but is pretty sweet over a local network.