Installing a new hard disk

Asheville Joe josephj at main.nc.us
Sat Aug 16 13:39:30 EDT 2003 

It works now.  Just set it up using harddrake!  One question remains:  
It was sold as a 120GB drive and df/harddrake says 111GB (and less 
available after formatting - have to put those pesky inodes somewhere).  
Does this mean there's a whole lot of dead blocks on the disk?  (At the 
price I paid, I don't care as long as the good part stays good.)

Lessons learned:
The power and disk activity lights on the removeable bay work even if 
the drive doesn't - so they don't help much in debugging this kind of 
problem.
You can't pull out and reseat the blinking drive cables too many times!

Joe

Asheville Joe wrote:

> Just went into harddrake and tried recovering the partition table on 
> the old hdb1.  It worked and I have access to hdb1 and the test data 
> on it.  Don't know why I had to do that.
>
> Joe
>
> Asheville Joe wrote:
>
>> Thanks. Between you and Peter I see that I'm having some sort of 
>> hardware problem with the drive. I'll play with it as soon as I have 
>> time. AS for "removeable" - I'll rename the darn thing rather than 
>> learn to spell ;)
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Joe
>>
>> Robert Meyer wrote:
>>
>>> --- Asheville Joe <josephj at main.nc.us> wrote:
>>>  
>>>
>>>> OK.  What else is new?  I don't know how to run fdisk!  It seemed 
>>>> simple enough, but below is my attempt.
>>>>
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# man fdisk
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# fdisk /dev/hdb1
>>>>
>>>> Unable to open /dev/hdb1
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> This is expected.  You can only fdisk the base device, not a 
>>> partition/slice.
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# fdisk /dev/hdb
>>>>
>>>> Unable to open /dev/hdb
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Looks like it doesn't know that /dev/hdb is there which seems to 
>>> indicate that
>>> the disk was not in the slot when the machine was booted.
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/removable
>>>> mount: mount point /mnt/removable does not exist
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# ls /mnt
>>>> cdrom/  dos_hda1/  dos_hda5/  floppy/  removeable/  win_c2/  
>>>> win_d2/  win_e/
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# mount /dev/hdb1 removable
>>>> mount: mount point removable does not exist
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You keep dropping the 'e' out of removeable (not removable).  Don't 
>>> you HATE
>>> when computers do what you tell them, and not what you mean???
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# man fdisk
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]# ls /dev/hd*
>>>> /dev/hda@  /dev/hda1@  /dev/hda2@  /dev/hda5@  /dev/hda6@  
>>>> /dev/hda7@  /dev/hda8@  /dev/hda9@  /dev/hdc@
>>>> [root at localhost bigbird]#
>>>>
>>>> The other drive (4GB IDE) works fine when installed and is 
>>>> /dev/hdb1 (/mnt/removeable).  BTW, What are all these at signs for 
>>>> and what's /dev/hdc?  Does it mean I got the hard drive jumper set 
>>>> wrong?
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The '@' signs mean that those are symbolic links.  In all 
>>> likelyhood, the
>>> actual drive names are /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part? where 
>>> the '?' is
>>> a number from 1 to 9 and /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disk which 
>>> refers to
>>> the whole disk for '/dev/hda'.  Drives are as followed (in the /dev/hd?
>>> context)
>>> hda - primary master
>>> hdb - primary slave
>>> hdc - secondary master
>>> hdd - secondary slave
>>>
>>> You may have a CDROM drive on the secondary interface as master 
>>> which would be
>>> /dev/hdc.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps...
>>>
>>> Cheers!
>>>
>>> Bob
>>>  
>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>       Joe
>>>>
>>>> This is what cfdisk displays (with some whitespace deleted).
>>>>
>>>>                                  cfdisk 2.11x
>>>>
>>>>                                Disk Drive: /dev/hda
>>>>                          Size: 30735581184 bytes, 30.7 GB
>>>>                Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 3736
>>>>
>>>> Name        Flags       Part Type       FS Type [Label] ize (MB)
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> hda1  Boot               Primary        Win95 FAT32 3668.48
>>>> hda5                     Logical        Win95 FAT32 3553.33
>>>> hda6                     Logical        Linux ext2    16.46
>>>> hda7                     Logical        Linux ext3  6407.50
>>>> hda8                     Logical        Linux swap   830.76
>>>> hda9                     Logical        Linux ext3 16253.16
>>>>
>>>> Robert Meyer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>> Well, changing the line in fstab only makes it stop trying to fsck 
>>>>> on the
>>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> way
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>> up.  All other file system things that you want to do, you still 
>>>>> have to do.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you have a new drive and want to use it with linux, then you 
>>>>> have to
>>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> fdisk
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>> it and do either 'mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1' or 'mke2fs /dev/hdb1' 
>>>>> (journalled or
>>>>> not) and then mount the drive.  I suspect that you can do that 
>>>>> from the
>>>>> mandrake control center.  This assumes you're going to make all one
>>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> partition.
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>> Cheers!
>>>>>
>>>>> Bob
>>>>> --- Asheville Joe <josephj at main.nc.us> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    
>>>>>
>>>>>> I was hoping it was something simple like that! I'll try that. 
>>>>>> Then what? mkfs and it's cousins have a bunch of options I don't 
>>>>>> really understand. Or will harddrake do it for me?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Joe
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Robert Meyer wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  
>>>>>>      
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It's bombing out 'cuz you're telling it to fsck the thing in 
>>>>>>> your fstab.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Change the fstab line to read:
>>>>>>> /dev/hdb1 /mnt/removeable ext3 user,noauto,rw,suid,exec 0 0
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hope this helps...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Cheers!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Bob
>>>>>>> --- Asheville Joe <josephj at main.nc.us> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>           
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi.  Linux 101 question:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I bought a new hard drive (for use with my new - not purchased 
>>>>>>>> yet - computer).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I have two hard drives in my current computer, the main one 
>>>>>>>> (dual boot Linux and WIN98), and one in a removable bay.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I have the removable one (hdb1) set as noauto in fstab.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So, I shut down my computer, pulled the old removable drive out 
>>>>>>>> and put the new one in thinking it would boot up fine and let 
>>>>>>>> me figure out how to format the new drive to ext3.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Oh well!  Mandrake (9.1 RC2) sees the new drive, can't read it 
>>>>>>>> and gets upset.  It will only boot into maintenance mode and I 
>>>>>>>> don't know enough to proceed.  That wasn't too bad, but I 
>>>>>>>> thought that having it set to noauto would have gotten me 
>>>>>>>> around this.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So, I shutdown and removed the new drive then rebooted.  It 
>>>>>>>> still won't let me past maintenance mode because it's missing 
>>>>>>>> it's beloved drive.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Questions:
>>>>>>>> 1) How do I set up my computer so that it is happy whether or 
>>>>>>>> not hdb1 is there?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2) How do I put the new drive in and format it (mkfs.ext3?)?  
>>>>>>>> It's a 120GB IDE drive that I will probably use for media files 
>>>>>>>> and image backups of the main drive on my new system when I get 
>>>>>>>> it.  (It will be installed in the new computer - so Bob, don't 
>>>>>>>> yell at me for putting more stuff in this old clunker. ;))
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 3) If I want to rename my drives - e.g. from dos_hda1 to 
>>>>>>>> cdrive_hda1, etc., do I have to do anything other than change 
>>>>>>>> the entries in /etc/fstab?  Is there anything to watch out for?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Joe
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> My /etc/fstab:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda7 / ext3 defaults 1 1
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda6 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
>>>>>>>> none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda9 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
>>>>>>>> none /mnt/cdrom supermount 
>>>>>>>> dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codep
>>>>>>>> age=850,umask=0 0 0
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos_hda1 vfat 
>>>>>>>> iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0,defaults 0
>>>>>>>> 0
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda5 /mnt/dos_hda5 vfat 
>>>>>>>> iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0,defaults 0
>>>>>>>> 0
>>>>>>>> none /mnt/floppy supermount 
>>>>>>>> dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,cod
>>>>>>>> epage=850,umask=0 0 0
>>>>>>>> /dev/hdb1 /mnt/removeable ext3 user,noauto,rw,suid,exec 1 2
>>>>>>>> none /proc proc defaults 0 0
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda8 swap swap defaults 0 0
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I shut down, put my old drive back in and it works as advertized.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> [root at localhost mnt]# mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/removeable
>>>>>>>> [root at localhost mnt]# cd removeable
>>>>>>>> [root at localhost removeable]# ls
>>>>>>>> [root at localhost removeable]# df
>>>>>>>> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda7             5.9G  2.4G  3.2G  43% /
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda6              16M  2.4M   13M  17% /boot
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda9              15G  328M   15G   3% /home
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda1             3.5G  2.3G  1.2G  66% /mnt/dos_hda1
>>>>>>>> /dev/hda5             3.4G  876M  2.5G  26% /mnt/dos_hda5
>>>>>>>> /dev/hdb1             4.0G   33M  3.7G   1% /mnt/removeable
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> [root at localhost removeable]# cd ..
>>>>>>>> [root at localhost mnt]# umount /dev/hdb1
>>>>>>>> [root at localhost mnt]#
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>  
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>                
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> __________________________________
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> __________________________________
>>>>> Do you Yahoo!?
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> __________________________________
>>> Do you Yahoo!?
>>> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
>>> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>
>

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