Re: Adding a ide drive to an all scsi computer
On Wed, 8 Jan 2003, Michael Kahle wrote:
> I am currently running Debian Sid on my computer. I have 3 SCSI drives in
> it and I would like to add a fourth IDE drive to it. I have a 80 GB drive
> that would be a great chunk-o-diskTM for me to store all kinds of goodies
> on. I originally built the system with one SCSI drive and later added the
> two others. This worked great for me! But here's my problem. I have heard
> that by adding a IDE drive into the system I will no longer be able to boot
> off of my SCSI drive. Is that true? I guess there is some BIOS issue with
> that.
Well, I can't speak for others but I've been doing this for more than a
year now without any problem at all (that should give you some hope of
success `;-). The only thing you need is a BIOS that will allow you to
set the boot priority of SCSI higher than IDE. Of course you will need
to adjust lilo or grub and fstab too. I had some trouble with lilo before
I learned to use the bios option, but that might not be the case for you.
Just in case it is useful to you, here's a copy of the relevant part of
my /etc/lilo.conf:
# Overrides the default mapping between harddisk names and the BIOS'
# harddisk order. Use with caution.
disk=/dev/hde
bios=0x81
disk=/dev/sda
bios=0x80
# Specifies the boot device. This is where Lilo installs its boot
# block. It can be either a partition, or the raw device, in which
# case it installs in the MBR, and will overwrite the current MBR.
#
boot=/dev/sda
# Specifies the device that should be mounted as root. (`/')
#
root=/dev/sda5
> To add to the complexity of this, the drive has about 50 GB of data
> that I want to keep... Oh, and it is formatted NTFS (Windows 2000). Can I
> add this IDE drive 'as is' without re-formatting it? I seem to remember
> seeing that I could mount a NTFS file system somewhere.
Add something like this to your /etc/fstab:
/dev/sdax /win ntfs defaults,ro,user,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
Adjust the device, mountpoint and userid to your situation. This will
allow you to use that partition as a normal user. If you prefer to mount
it yourself add the noauto option.
Others will probably warn you against using it (that happens almost every
time someone mentions it) and they are right to let you know this isn't
a risk-free affair. On the other hand I have been using NTFS in read-only
mode for years now ('til recently on a daily basis) and have NEVER had
any trouble with it. So, don't let those warnings scare you off. Do heed
them however when it comes to using write-mode: I won't dare to without a
current and verified backup of that partition.
HTH
Grx HdV
--
Support bacteria -
they're the only culture some people have.
J.A. de Vries aka HdV
Delft University of Technology
Computing Centre
Email: J.A.deVries@DTO.TUDelft.NL
Email: HdV@DTO.TUDelft.NL
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