[H-GEN] Slave H/D

Robert Brockway robert at timetraveller.org
Mon May 5 02:59:30 EDT 2003


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On Mon, 5 May 2003, David Munn wrote:

> Hi All.....im new to this list so if i make a blue please be gentle....
> I want to know how to use another h/d as a slave to my master h/d on Linux..
> what do i have to have on the slave for it to work.....
> The present system is a Pentium 200,40 gig h/d,80 meg ram,Red Hat 8.0 running
> KDE 3,52x cdrom drive,3.5 floppy,VibraX 128 soundcard,Diamond 56k external
> modem,Canon BJC-265SP printer,Reateck PCI Network card......
> The h/d that i want to use as a slave is a 2 gig Western Digital Caviar
> 32500.....
>
> Any help ideas and tips would be appreciated....

Ok, not sure if you've got the hardware setup so I'll start there.

On an IDE channel there are 2 ways to determine which HD is the master &
which is the slave:

1.  One drive is jumpered as master and the is jumpered as slave.

2.  Both drives are jumpered as Cable Select (CS).

I don't believe any combination of CS and Master/slave will work but
others on the list may have comments.  You'll need to figure out whether
your current drive is a master by way of jumpering or through CS.  A
visuaul inspection of the jumpers should reveal this.

Setup the slave drive suitably (ie, jumpered to CS or jumpered to slave).

If the system boots you've probably got the jumpering correct.  anytime
when I've seen the jumpering wrong the system has failed to boot.

Whenever dealing with PC hardware but particulary where HDs are concerned,
always consider that individual manufacturers often bend or break the
rules so there are always counter-examples to any general rule.

Leaving hardware aside, things get easier.

Make sure the bios sees both drives.  Avoid doing anything with your
master (ie, your current drive) lest the bios change some settings.

Set the slave to auto detection if possible.

When Linux boots it should see both drives.  Your master will be /dev/hda
and the slave will be /dev/hdb.  You should see these mentioned in the
bootup messages.  Once the system is running do a dmesg to see those
messages again.

Try this (as root):

fdisk -l /dev/hdb

If you get a report of a drive then congratulations, you're rolling.
If not, then you'll need to figure out what went wrong.

If fdisk sees the drive, execute this commend:

fdisk /dev/hdb (or cfdisk /dev/hdb)

This will allow you to write the partition table.

Make sure you are operating on the correct drive!  Writing over the
partition table of a drive containging data will ruin your day (or week or
year...)  Stop & consider before writing the partition table.  You'll be
glad you did (eventually).

Once the partitoion table is written you make make a filesystem on the
newly created partitions.

Something like mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1 will make an ext3 (journalling)
filesystem on /dev/hdb1.  Remember, this will _erase_ anything formally on
hdb1 without prompting.

Now mount /dev/hdb1 with something like:

mount -t ext3 /dev/hdb1 /mnt

Voila, new filesystem.

See man fstab for how to setup the system to always mount the filesystem
at boot.

This has just been a quick overview I knocked up in a few minutes.
Hopefully it'll get you on the right track.

Well, I'm off to sleep.  Late here :)

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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