Adding additional HD space
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 My current 2GB HD is reaching maximum capacity, is fairly old and probably about to die. What is the best way to go about replacing the drive? Few points to keep in mind: 1. The system cannot deal with HD drives over, I believe, 8 gigs. 2. I suppose it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: its critical to maintain the existing data! The machine is my web, mail, ssh, vpn, and ftp server. Needles to say I do a full backup every night. Ideally I'd like to buy new drive and do a "ghost" of the old drive onto the new drive. If you're not familiar with the term "ghost" -- in the Windows world there is a piece of software the allows you to do a bit for bit copy of one drive to another and accordingly its called Norton Ghost. Would doing a full restore from my backup be equivalent to this? If so, how do I preserve the partition structure and how do I actually perform the task? Do I boot using the old HD, do the restore onto the new drive, shutdown, unhook the old drive and reboot? How do I know the data is unaltered and is an exact copy? My last question -- How can I get the system to recognize larger hard drives? I have been successful getting older systems to recognize large drives using utilities such as MaxBlaster from Maxtor, but that was using Windows. Are there similar utilities for FreeBSD? I tried adding a 10 gig drive the system in question but the system refused to boot with that drive in any place on the IDE chain. I was also unsuccessful in using the MaxBlaster to enable the drive for use on the system. Maybe I was doing something wrong? Thanks in advance. ... Randomly Generated Quote: 'A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.' -- Barry Goldwater Mike Loiterman PGP Key 0xD1B9D18E http://www.ascendency.net -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 7.0.4 Comment: Message digitally signed by Mike Loiterman iQA/AwUBPczK9WjZbUnRudGOEQI5cwCgtUceNvjBESBz1WE2Oh0U1oKy+TEAnj5q P00iJZZ6WyVf1EvckZlcWr8v =gRXu -END PGP SIGNATURE- To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Re: Adding additional HD space
The 10 GB Hard Disk should have a "BIOS Limitation" jumper that will make the BIOS think it is a 508 MB drive. Set that jumper, and the system should boot. Once you have that drive in there, you could create the file system structure on it however you want, but place the / and /boot partitions below 500 MB so that the system will boot when you take out the old drive. Note that you will have to tell fdisk the correct geometry of the disk. Otherwise, create the partitions exactly how you have them on your 2 GB drive, making them larger as you wish, and dump + restore the files from one disk to the other. Once everything is copied over, you can install the boot sector on the new drive with "fdisk -B -b /boot/mbr" NOTE: Replace /boot/mbr with the path of the new hard disk! For example, /mnt/boot/mbr if you mounted the new disk under /mnt. After this is done, you can set the jumpers on the new drive to match the position of the old one (master, for example) and simply swap it out. Reboot, and enjoy. Marco Radzinschi E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Mike Loiterman wrote: > > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > My current 2GB HD is reaching maximum capacity, is fairly old and > probably about to die. What is the best way to go about replacing > the drive? > > Few points to keep in mind: > 1. The system cannot deal with HD drives over, I believe, 8 gigs. > 2. I suppose it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: its > critical to maintain the existing data! The machine is my web, mail, > ssh, vpn, and ftp server. Needles to say I do a full backup every > night. > > Ideally I'd like to buy new drive and do a "ghost" of the old drive > onto the new drive. If you're not familiar with the term "ghost" -- > in the Windows world there is a piece of software the allows you to > do a bit for bit copy of one drive to another and accordingly its > called Norton Ghost. > > Would doing a full restore from my backup be equivalent to this? If > so, how do I preserve the partition structure and how do I actually > perform the task? Do I boot using the old HD, do the restore onto > the new drive, shutdown, unhook the old drive and reboot? How do I > know the data is unaltered and is an exact copy? > > My last question -- How can I get the system to recognize larger hard > drives? I have been successful getting older systems to recognize > large drives using utilities such as MaxBlaster from Maxtor, but that > was using Windows. Are there similar utilities for FreeBSD? > > I tried adding a 10 gig drive the system in question but the system > refused to boot with that drive in any place on the IDE chain. I was > also unsuccessful in using the MaxBlaster to enable the drive for use > on the system. Maybe I was doing something wrong? > > Thanks in advance. > > ... > Randomly Generated Quote: > 'A government that is big enough to > give you all you want is big enough to > take it all away.' -- Barry Goldwater > > Mike Loiterman > PGP Key 0xD1B9D18E > http://www.ascendency.net > > > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- > Version: PGP 7.0.4 > Comment: Message digitally signed by Mike Loiterman > > iQA/AwUBPczK9WjZbUnRudGOEQI5cwCgtUceNvjBESBz1WE2Oh0U1oKy+TEAnj5q > P00iJZZ6WyVf1EvckZlcWr8v > =gRXu > -END PGP SIGNATURE- > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
RE: Adding additional HD space
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 > The 10 GB Hard Disk should have a "BIOS Limitation" jumper that > will make the BIOS think it is a 508 MB drive. Set that jumper, > and the system should boot. I thought so too. I tried setting it, but I couldn't get it to boot. I guess the drive *could* be damaged, but I just pulled it out of a Windows box where it was working fine. It still has XP on it. Would that make a difference? I never reformatted it after I pulled it out. > Once you have that drive in there, you could create the file system > structure on it however you want, but place the / and /boot > partitions below 500 MB so that the system will boot when you take > out the old drive. Do you mean make the / and /boot partitions *less* then 500 MB or *below*. If you mean below, I'm not sure how to do that. > Note that you will have to tell fdisk the correct geometry of the > disk. I don't know how to do this or at least I don't remeber. > Otherwise, create the partitions exactly how you have them on your > 2 GB drive, making them larger as you wish, and dump + restore the > files from one disk to the other. When you say "dump + restore" you mean do a level 0 dump and then a restore? Is that correct? ... Randomly Generated Quote: The moral of the story is: Kill the parents kill the children. Mike Loiterman PGP Key 0xD1B9D18E http://www.ascendency.net -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 7.0.4 Comment: Message digitally signed by Mike Loiterman iQA/AwUBPc7iZ2jZbUnRudGOEQLmGACg3Ql+Y6arFF74pECW1QUqTTqiCdQAoMx7 z0+lIzJj2pSAGxUP+w0eEbU1 =oMj+ -END PGP SIGNATURE- To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
RE: Adding additional HD space
On Sun, 10 Nov 2002, Mike Loiterman wrote: > > > The 10 GB Hard Disk should have a "BIOS Limitation" jumper that > > will make the BIOS think it is a 508 MB drive. Set that jumper, > > and the system should boot. > > I thought so too. I tried setting it, but I couldn't get it to boot. > I guess the drive *could* be damaged, but I just pulled it out of a > Windows box where it was working fine. It still has XP on it. Would > that make a difference? I never reformatted it after I pulled it > out. > You might want to check the BIOS settings. Instead of having it "autodetect" the hard disk, for example, set it to the highest that the hard disk's documentation suggests. > > Once you have that drive in there, you could create the file system > > structure on it however you want, but place the / and /boot > > partitions below 500 MB so that the system will boot when you take > > out the old drive. > > Do you mean make the / and /boot partitions *less* then 500 MB or > *below*. If you mean below, I'm not sure how to do that. Make the / and /boot partitions the first ones, and make them LESS than 500 MB, combined. Technically, the / partition includes /boot, but so you could get away with just making a / partition. Also, the limit is 504 MB, but I prefer to make / around 256 MB. > > Note that you will have to tell fdisk the correct geometry of the > > disk. > > I don't know how to do this or at least I don't remeber. When you run fdisk, you can set the correct geometry. If you are not comfortable with fdisk, then you can just run /stand/sysinstall and do it from there. Sysinstall is the FreeBSD installer, and has a menu driven partition feature. You can select it under "Configure," then "Fdisk" and "Label" appropriately. > > Otherwise, create the partitions exactly how you have them on your > > 2 GB drive, making them larger as you wish, and dump + restore the > > files from one disk to the other. > > When you say "dump + restore" you mean do a level 0 dump and then a > restore? Is that correct? Dump level 0 is the correct one, but in your particular case, you may want to use tar instead. It is up to you. Marco Radzinschi E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil) To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
