Re: New HD advice
David Baron wrote:
I have two disks in my system now: an older 8g with Windows 98 (still need it
for my sound work, I'm afrad), and a newer 40g. This one has a 16g vfat32 for
audio data, another for other windows data (has documents, also cygwin and a
copy of the 6g of windows junk from the old disk--maintained by rsync) and a
6g ext3 for Debian sid and 2g swap.
The old disk has started to fail when the room is warm. Power-supply
relay-clikcing sounds. Windows will hang and linux will cite DMA timeouts and
will also hang is accessing that disk. If I keep the temperature down, it
works perfectly.
Install smartmontools and see what it says.
I may put in another 40g to replace this one. This would have two or more
vfat32 partions for the Win98, the cygwin and the documents. I would leave
the sound stuff where it is, maybe make the partition bigger. This leaves me
with anywhere from 8-16g for new linux partitions. So ...
Check prices. I think there's not a lot of merit in 40 Gbyte drives any
more.
1. What would be an sane, effective way of setting things up, i.e.
move /local, /var, others to their own places?
Software, swap on one drive. home the new one. Possibly /var as well.
2. Is it better for the swap to be on a different drive? If so, how does one
move it?
Don't move it. I recommend a swap _file_ not a parition. It's more
flexible wrt resizing if you need. and if/when you use a 2.6 kernel
there are no peformance benefits to swap partitions. Iff there ever were
on desktops.
Swap belongs on your least busy drive, in your busiest partition.
Least busy drive reduces contention.
Busiest parition reduces average seek.
I have partionmagic on the windows and qparted on linux at my disposal. Thanks
for any advice.
I had great success copying Windows 95 around the place using Linux and
no special tools. Other than copying, I'd leave the old drive alone.
That way, if you stuff it up once, you can try again.
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au Z1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/
Reply to: