On 10/21/05, jim scott <jimdscott at gmail.com> wrote: > I just installed a second hard drive. For now I'm mounting it as > /mnt/drive2. Everything is working fine. I'd rather mount it as /usr or > /home, but I'm worried about what will happen to my existing data in those > paths if suddenly mount the new drive at either of those points. Thanks for > any advice. > > Here's my current config: > /etc/fstab: > # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details > /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1 > LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 > /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0 > /dev/hda1 /windows vfat users 0 0 > /dev/hdd2 /mnt/drive2 ext2 defaults 1 1 > /dev/hdd1 /mnt/D vfat umask=000,rw 0 0 > > First hard drive > Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-12419.056 megabytes > Disk label type: msdos > Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags > 1 0.031 5812.580 primary fat32 boot > 2 5812.581 5914.555 primary ext3 > 3 5914.556 12417.429 primary lvm > > > Second hard drive > Disk geometry for /dev/hdd: 0.000-78167.250 megabytes > Disk label type: msdos > Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags > 1 0.031 39997.771 primary fat32 > 2 39997.771 78159.990 primary ext2 Jim - this isn't hard to do at all - I've done it several times w/ very few problems. For purposes of this example, let's assume that you're going to be moving /home to the new drive. 1. You have the new drive mounted as /mnt/drive2 currently, right? Make sure there's no data on it that you need and then wipe the partition clean. 2. Run this command: $ rsync -av /home/ /mnt/drive2/ Make sure you run that *exact* command, including the trailing slashes, otherwise rsync will do funky stuff with your files. If you're not familiar with rsync, it's (more or less) an effecient copy routine. If an rsync gets interrupted for some reason, you can just run it again and it'll pick up where it left off. 3. After you get everything copied over, verify that, indeed, all the data is there, and that is has the correct ownership/mode/etc. The "-a" flag of rsync copies in "archive" mode, and it is supposed to transfer all of that information over. It never hurts to double-check, though. 4. After verifying this info, you can delete the data in your original /home : $ cd /home $ rm -rf * If it makes you feel better, and you don't have a huge amount of data in home you may want to make a second "backup" of the folder: $ cd / $ tar cvzf /tmp/home-backup.tar.gz /home 5. Now, once your original /home is empty, unmount your second drive and remount it as /home: $ umount /mnt/drive2 $ mount /dev/hdd2 /home 6. Now you need to make the changes to your fstab file...you should delete the current line that includes /dev/hdd2 and then add a line like this: /dev/hdd2 /home ext2 noatime 0 2 That should be about it. Good luck! -Erik