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From: M.Lewis on 11 Apr 2010 03:30

I have a machine running Lenny with a 250GB IDE HD in it. The HD is on
its last legs giving S.M.A.R.T. errors.

I have a question about how best to divide things up in the new setup.
The current 250GB IDE HD has two partitions on it:

/dev/hda1 = linux (~80 MB)
/dev/hda2 = linux LVM (~249.92 GB)

I'm thinking to replace this IDE drive with two SATA HDs. One as small
as I can get. Say 100GB or so and make that the boot drive. And a second
HD say 500GB or so and moving the LVM over to that.

Would it be better to move the LVM to a larger SATA drive and migrate
the boot drive on to a new small IDE HD? I've even thought to set it up
to boot from a flash drive. Not sure that would be wise either.

My question is is this a 'wise' thing. If not, why not and what would be
the better approach?

Thanks,
Mike


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From: Cecil Knutson on 11 Apr 2010 04:40
> I have a question about how best to divide things up in the new setup.

> I'm thinking to replace this IDE drive with two SATA HDs. One as small
> as I can get. Say 100GB or so and make that the boot drive. And a second
> HD say 500GB or so and moving the LVM over to that.
>
> Would it be better to move the LVM to a larger SATA drive and migrate
> the boot drive on to a new small IDE HD?
No.
I've even thought to set it up
> to boot from a flash drive. Not sure that would be wise either.
Only if you really doubt the integrity of your HD, or want to install onto
a system too small to include the kernel. Bootable flash drives are
invaluable if you have to get into a system that will not boot from the HD
for some reason. But make sure the flash drive will mount all HDs it
finds or be prepared to manually mount them after boot.
>
> My question is is this a 'wise' thing. If not, why not and what would be
> the better approach?
Mike,
My experience with both Windows and Linux is: the more partitions the
better. They not only allow you to organize all the files, but, more
importantly, any maintenance that needs to be done will take a much
shorter time. This is critical in Windows, but not so much in Linux. The
Linux books I have also say it is good to separate /var and /temp as these
are most likely to fill and separating them prevents the HD from being
inadvertently filled. They also agree that, if ever needed, it is much
easier to reinstall the system if you only have to clear the /boot, /usr
and / partitions. Their recommendations are: /boot (about 50-100MB,
depends mainly on the size of the kernel); /swap (twice the system RAM);/
(150-300MB); /usr (at least 300MB); /home (300MB for a single user is
okay, but >500MB is better); /var (200-300MB); /temp (200-300MB). Putting
the /boot, /, /usr partitions on one HD makes sense to me. All other
mount points would be on other HDs.
I have never heard or read of anyone advising one to get anything other
than the largest HD they could for the money they have. Why would you
want a 100MB SATA HD? Just for a small /boot? Partitioning the drive is
as good as separate drives if all you're concerned about is the size of
the /boot partition. More to the point, I have not seen any new SATA HD
less than 80GB. You are swimming upstream (to say the least) if you want
less than a GB of capacity in a SATA HD. Look at the $/GB for HDs and buy
accordingly. LVM does not require multiple HDs, so 1.5TB divided into
several partitions can still use LVM. LVM simply makes adding more HDs
easy. Having more than one HD simply means that you only stand to lose
the files on one HD at a time, instead of losing everything upon one
failure. RAID is the only insurance against HD failure, but most agree
that only servers really need RAID. Put your critical personal files and
hardware drivers on a Flash drive, if nothing else.
Hope this helps.


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From: Stan Hoeppner on 11 Apr 2010 07:20
M.Lewis put forth on 4/11/2010 2:19 AM:

> I'm thinking to replace this IDE drive with two SATA HDs. One as small
> as I can get. Say 100GB or so and make that the boot drive. And a second
> HD say 500GB or so and moving the LVM over to that.

First, LVM isn't a "thing" you move. LVM is a tool to manage drives and
partitions. For most single user machines, such as a desktop or laptop, LVM
isn't necessary. It depends on personal preference and how you like to
monkey with your free space. I personally don't use LVM. Others swear by it.

> Would it be better to move the LVM to a larger SATA drive and migrate
> the boot drive on to a new small IDE HD? I've even thought to set it up
> to boot from a flash drive. Not sure that would be wise either.

What would be better is to buy two equal size drives and mirror them with
mdadm, keeping your current partition layout or something similar. Having a
separate /boot partition is always a good idea. If you're going to buy two
drives, you'd be stupid to not use mirroring for fault tolerance and a
little added read performance here and there (depends on application). And
yes, booting from a pen drive is a dumb idea.

> My question is is this a 'wise' thing. If not, why not and what would be
> the better approach?

I just mentioned it above. You can get two WD 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3Gb/s
drives for $100 from Newegg or two 500GB drives for $112:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136074
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073

I have one of the 500GB drives and have been very pleased with it. It's
whisper quiet and one of the fastest 7200 RPM drives on the market because
it's a single platter drive with only two heads.

Do you have SATA on your motherboard or do you need a SATA card? If you
need one this Koutech isn't bad. It's what I'm running my WD on. I get
about 85MB/s sequential sustained running benchies, but the system is really
old, an Intel 440BX with PC100 memory.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815104219

--
Stan


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From: Ron Johnson on 11 Apr 2010 11:20
On 2010-04-11 02:19, M.Lewis wrote:
>
> I have a machine running Lenny with a 250GB IDE HD in it. The HD is on
> its last legs giving S.M.A.R.T. errors.
>
> I have a question about how best to divide things up in the new setup.
> The current 250GB IDE HD has two partitions on it:
>
> /dev/hda1 = linux (~80 MB)
> /dev/hda2 = linux LVM (~249.92 GB)
>
> I'm thinking to replace this IDE drive with two SATA HDs. One as small
> as I can get. Say 100GB or so and make that the boot drive. And a second
> HD say 500GB or so and moving the LVM over to that.

Sounds eminently reasonable to me.

> Would it be better to move the LVM to a larger SATA drive and migrate
> the boot drive on to a new small IDE HD?

You could do that, too.

Or reinstall fresh to the new IDE drive. Debian is great enough
that you *never must* reinstall, but it helps by clearing out old
cruft, etc.

> I've even thought to set it up
> to boot from a flash drive. Not sure that would be wise either.

Booting from flash and having the mechanical drives as /home and
"data" would also work.

Except... /var and /tmp. They volatile enough that flash probably
isn't the best place for them to be. You should put them on small
"mechanical" partitions.

> My question is is this a 'wise' thing. If not, why not and what would be
> the better approach?
>

Sure. lvm even has a utility to move a PV from one partition to
another (even though I've never gotten it to work).

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From: Tom H on 11 Apr 2010 15:30
On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 3:19 AM, M.Lewis <cajun(a)cajuninc.com> wrote:
>
> I have a machine running Lenny with a 250GB IDE HD in it. The HD is on its
> last legs giving S.M.A.R.T. errors.
>
> I have a question about how best to divide things up in the new setup. The
> current 250GB IDE HD has two partitions on it:
>
> /dev/hda1 = linux (~80 MB)
> /dev/hda2 = linux LVM (~249.92 GB)
>
> I'm thinking to replace this IDE drive with two SATA HDs. One as small as I
> can get. Say 100GB or so and make that the boot drive. And a second HD say
> 500GB or so and moving the LVM over to that.
>
> Would it be better to move the LVM to a larger SATA drive and migrate the
> boot drive on to a new small IDE HD? I've even thought to set it up to boot
> from a flash drive. Not sure that would be wise either.

Given the current size of HDs, dedicating a full one to /boot is a
waste since 250MB will be amply sufficient.

You should use either one HD to replicate your current system on a
larger disk or two and set up mdadm to use RAID 1 array.

At work, someone (probably a project manager who convinced the
powers-that-be that we were "misallocating san resources") convinced
management that we shouldn't slice up our Solaris boxes with the usual
/, swap, /var, /usr, /opt, and /export/home. This decision carried
over to our RHEL servers and I have followed suit in my private and
moonlighting habits and I split up my disks into / and /home (and
/boot if using mdadm and/or lvm). We have 1,000s of servers and get
the occasional "root is over 90%" alert but it has been a mostly
painless change.

If you really want separate partitions for /usr and /var, check your
current usage with "du -sh /usr; du -sh /var" and use those values
plus a decent margin to set up a new layout.


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