Adding a SATA internal hard drive
 

Hi

I am currently running Suse 10.0 on a desktop with an intell motherboard and a 80Gb PATA hardrive. I have purchase a SATA 300GB hard drive for more storage( really need the space). I know that my mother board supports both types. Can I just add onto the existing system or will I need to get rid of the PATA drive. Both are Maxtor drives.

If it is possible to use both I would like to set up as follows
80 GB formatted with swap and / and /boot partitions and the a small
windows partition(20GB)

300gb formatted with /home partition


Is this setup ok, I figure I'll be able to format and reinstall easily this way with disrupting fotos and video on 300Gb drive.

PS windows partition not desperately needed but rest of family likes. Also wireless woes abound but thats another forum.

Me Mat

you should be fine to simply plug the device in. as long as it is picked up by the kernel, you should have a /dev/sda ready and waiting. just make a partition and format it.

i'd strongly suggest using more partitions than just / and /boot. you should have /usr /tmp etc in a technically correct world. you might prefer to place these partitions inside a single LVM partition though, for superior flexibility.

Added Hard drive
 

Hi

Haven't got down to the job for a while but now done.

Thanks for mentioning LVM - didn't know about it previously. Found a really useful write up at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/ .

All read that easiest to install Windows first then linux. Windows can fuss if done the other way around. Tried both anyway - noted that u cannot put windows into standby if not install on first partition.

The Suse installer is quite smart with setting up LVM - just remember to specify correct mountpoint eg I've got Photos on a 50GB LVM 'partition' mounted as /home/myname/photos.

Of note also Windows recognised the LVM volume as a drive and assigned a letter to it. If u click on that it asks if u want to format it.....not good especially if others using it. I've disabled it in windows(right click, properties, do not use device)

Thanks again