Hard Drive Question

[Type-O]

I'm currently redoing my whole system. I have two Hard drive a 30gig and a 60gig. I want to know will I have problems with a drive (60gig) with Linux? Should I partition it or what? Im putting Winblows 2k on the 30gig.

thanks

[michaelk]

If you are going to install a standard CD distro then the installer will partition and format the drive. If the computer is capable of accessing a 60G hard drive then so can the latest linux versions.

[rustskull]

disk partitioning is largely a philosophical issue, and it's practical aspects depend on how new your hardware is, what you are going to be doing with your linux distro, etc.

The best experts I know suggest (and I agree with them) making separate partitions for /, /home, /usr, /var, and possibly /opt. Some even make another partition for /tmp if they have large useage of that directory (printer spooling goes through there as well as a lot of large applications use it for open files)...also one more partition for /export if you're using solaris.

There's also good general guidelines in the debian install manual (applicable for any distro, not just debian)
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-partitioning.en.html#s6.4

all of chapter six is good (and only a couple of pages long), but the above link is the most concise explanation of practicalities.
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-partitioning.en.html

HTH

-rust

PS MAKE SURE YOUR BIOS IS AT THE MOST CURRENT REV
I can't stress this enough. Hard drive support is bios dependant. I spent 3 days debugging a system because put the drives in newer hardware (went from pentum 90 to a celeron 500) and it wouldn't see the 60G drive that worked just fine on the crusty hardware no matter what I did. Replaced the drives in the old hardware, worked fine. Switch to new, broke. VERY FRUSTRATING, especially since it was a shared server at work. Checked the bios rev against the mfr site and found that even though the motherboard was many years newer than the old one, it's current bios was predating huge drives and there was a specific fix for just that problem in a newer bios rev. Flashed the bios and everything started working instantly and life was good.

Takes two minutes to check, might save you hours of grief.

[LrngTheHardWay]

Originally posted by michaelk
If you are going to install a standard CD distro then the installer will partition and format the drive. If the computer is capable of accessing a 60G hard drive then so can the latest linux versions.

I won't tell you how to part your HDD--to each his/her own in that venue--but Linux will deal with 160GB HDDs without a problem, if that's your major concern.