How to create a separate drive other than the root???
 

Is ter anyway to create a separate partition other than the root....(i.e.) creating one or more partitions that is similar in creating multiple drives(like C:,D:,E) in Windows.

Depending on your setup, you might first have to re-size the existing partition. In this case, you need to boot from a "live CD" and run something like GParted (this comes on its own bootable CD also).

Before re-sizing, be sure to back up any important data.

If you already have empty (unpartitioned) space on the disk, then you can make new partitions using fdisk, cfdisk, and other tools.

To see what you have now, run "fdisk -l" as root. Post the output here if you need help interpreting.

linux does not have separate drives in the strict sense like windows. Removable media is typically located at /media/cdrom or /mnt/cdrom. In fact many distribution installers automatically create multiple partitions i.e. /boot, /(root) swap. Yes you can create separate partitions for anything i.e /home, /usr, /tmp etc but all filesystems are mounted on the big file tree under /.

BTW what version are you running?

The basics are the same--what Windows calls a "drive", we call a "partition". In the early days, I guess "C Partition" just did not sound good.....;)

In Linux, partition not mounted as root are mounted on a subdirectory of root. A drive in Linux refers to a physical hard drive. The Windows use of C: and D: are holdovers from MSDOS. An install script will use %SYSTEM% instead of C:. In windows, these "drives" are just arbitrary aliases. Also, if you have one hard drive in Windows, and a CDROM, the CDROM will be D:. Later adding a new drive or repartitioning, the second drive will be D: breaking some software. In later versions of windows, the drive assignments don't change which causes software not to break but now as a user, D: doesn't mean the first partition of the second drive. And you might have mapped network services to device names, which is totally arbitrary. One persons K: drive is another person's L: drive. Even is Windows it is better using funtional names instead of msdos letters.

You could setup a new hard drive so that it contains only one partition as large as the drive and create a filesystem label for it like "D". Then in KDE you could right click on the Desktop and click on the behavior tab. Then click on the button to display disk devices on the desktop. That my make you feel more at home as a windows user, however, if you are adding a second hard drive, it may be better if you used it for a new /home partition, making more room for /tmp and /usr.

A larger /tmp over 9GB would allow you to use it when burning DVDs to hold the temporary ISO image. The /usr partition (or directory) contains a hierarchy with some of the same subdirectories (bin/,lib/,sbin/) as the root (/) directory. When you install new user software it will be installed in places like /usr/bin/ & /usr/lib/ so the usage of /usr will grow with time and tends to be the second largest partition on a desktop.

There is a good document "The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard" available for download at the www.tldp.org website. It explains the Linux hierarchy.

I am using Redhat 8. As above said if i allocate in /home or /usr it is present in that folder(i.e. under /usr) and not as a separate drive...and wat will happen if i do with /opt.can i do it with VFAT file system????

Thanks in adv :)

Thanks :)

I got stuckup with partitioning only....I am unable to use the Physical volume file system

Thanks :)

Do you mean LVM (Logical Volume Management)?

I don't like LVM and I don't use it, but I think you can have a mix---ie you can add a partition and use it directly.

Please post the output of "fdisk -l" and "mount". (Commands entered in a terminal.)

Pixellany

You did catch that he was using RH8?

No, but how is that relevant? (I'm not a student of RedHat.)

He may have meant FC8. Yes RH 8 is obsolete.

Don't use fat32 for /opt. That is where complex packages like KDE may be installed to. Fat32 isn't a linux native filesystem and linux permissions won't work.

With LVM, you can add another drive and extend the size of any partition on the LVM easily. Use FC's LVM manager program.

I was thinking LVM was not introduced (natively) in RH until RH9 but it looks like (not sure) that it started with RH7.3.