[HLUG] Multiple disk setup

[Paul Stenning]

Hi Ralph,

Ideally hard disks and optical drives should not be on the same IDE 
channel.  The channel will run at the speed of the slowest interface, 
which is probably the optical drive.

However in this case as they are for storage rather than performance I 
don't think it will be an issue.  They are older drives anyway so 
probably ATA66 at best.  Older optical drives are probably ATA33.

You can have a maximum of two drives per channel.  You could add one 
hard drive onto the primary IDE channel with the optical drive, but that 
could change the drive names as it would go in front of the existing drives.

The easiest way would be to add a PCI IDE controller which will have two 
channels allowing up to four additional drives.  Some of these have 
basic RAID functions which would allow mirroring (RAID1) or spanning 
(RAID0).  You would need to check compatibility of the controller with 
your Linux distro, but I guess it would show as a generic controller if 
not correctly supported.

Also check the power supply can cope with the load.  That's not easy to 
calculate, but I would think a 400W or bigger one should do.  A 300W one 
could be pushing it a bit.

Paul


Ralph Jones wrote:
> Hello again, 
> 
> In addition to my philanthropic mission (see previous post), I'm also
> going to try and add some more HDD to my existing installation, in so
> far as:
> 
> - iPodder stalls while I'm out on the road in the middle of downloading
> podcasts, due to lack of disk space
> - we're in the middle of a credit crunch, so I don't want to spend money
> on new drives
> - I've got a few 20Gb and 40Gb drives lying around from previous
> self-builds, from which I never got round to recovering the data, but
> still intend to.
> 
> At the moment I have one 10Gb drive , /dev/hda, partitioned and mounted
> as /, /boot and swap, upon which I have Linux installed; 
> and one 40Gb drive, /dev/hdb, mounted as /home.
> 
> The setup I'm looking at, based on my limited experience and
> understanding of under-the-bonnet Linux, is as follows:
> 
> - one 20Gb HSS as /dev/hda1, partioned as /, /boot and swap; to be used
> for the OS only 
> 
> - two 40Gb drives, which I'd like to 'pair as one',and then mount
> as /home
> 
> I'm not looking for parity, backup, striping or similar RAID functions,
> I just want to have one large 80Gb disk. Am I looking to LVM to achieve
> the 'pairing' of the two 40Gb drives, so as to be mounted under the same
> mount point?
> 
> Further (these are all IDE drives); how would I go about cabling/IDE
> channels?
> Currently, my DVD is one it's own cable, one the first IDE channel;
> while the two existing drives (/root & /home) share an IDE cable on the
> second IDE channel, using the master/slaves jumpers for selection.
> (IIRC, the master is on the end of the ribbon, while the slave sits on
> the connector halfway along the ribbon).
> 
> How would I go best about sharing ribbons and channels on my proposed
> setup?
> 
> Your thoughts/insights please :)
> Ralph
> 
> 
> 
> 
>