Adding Disks to system

[Karl Bowden]

On 29 April 2010 20:38, Paul Gear <paul at libertysys.com.au> wrote:

>  On 28/04/10 14:00, Chris Martin wrote:
>
> Peter.
>
> This the short version...
> Contact me if you need more specific instructions
>
>
> A few suggestions, given that this was the short version.  :-)
>
>
>
> Once you have the drive installed.
>
> use "gparted" - this is a GUI tool that will partition and format the new
> disk
>
>
> I'm not sure if gparted allows you to specify a label for the filesystem.
> If it doesn't, then you can add one later (with e2label), but i would
> strongly recommend adding a label, since then it makes no difference where
> the disk is connected.  I would suggest a label of something like "/home".
>
>
>  The mount it in a convenient location (say /mnt)
>
> Copy your existing /home to /mnt - takeing care to preserve permissions and
> ownership
>
>
> rsync is probably the best way to do this: you would run "rsync -SHavx
> /home/ /mnt/" (don't miss the trailing slashes).
>
>
>  umount /mnt,
>
> mount your drive as /home - this will replace the directory /home with the
> content of the drive (however the original data in /home will still be
> preserved, just not accessible while the drive is mounted)
>
> test..  test.. test..
>
> if all goes well, unmount /home,
> double check it is unmounted ...  and check again
>
> delete the origional /home contents
>
> mount the drive as /home (again)
>
>
> Great advice there - mounting over the contents allows an absolutely
> painless recovery method if it doesn't work: just unmount the filesystem and
> you're back exactly where you were.
>
>
> edit /etc/fstab to make the change persistant across reboot and have /home
> mounted automatically on reboot
>
>
> When you edit fstab, use LABEL=/home for the device instead of /dev/sdb1 or
> whatever you've been using so far.  That way, you can move the drive around
> without any issues.
>
> Paul
>

I'd just like to second Paul's advice for using filesystem labels. If your
going to be adding disks in the future too or changing anything around it
makes life so much easier. It's almost like Ubuntu's use of UUID's for
filesystem identifiers, except readable. The trade off for
the reasonableness being increase of the chance that there will be multiple
filesystems with the same label.
Ie: I already have my harddrive partitioned to with root, home and swap
and labelled as written. I connect a friends harddrive to recover his home
folder for him, but his fs label is home too. Clash. But by that time at
least you will be aware of what is happening and should be pretty to fix.
This is not a warning though. Absolutely go for it. The benefits are great
when you see them pay off, just be aware of the possibility of a clash and
don't be afraid to ask for help if it happens.

- Karl
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