Replacing/Adding new hard disk to FC5

[Paul Howarth]

Don Russell wrote:
> I have an old Dell Optiplex GX240 with BIOS A05 (latest available, 
> 2002-08-16) and 1G memory (max supported)
> 
> It has a 40G hard disk but it is very nearly full....
> 
> I'd like to add a second drive, somewhere in the 250G range.... but is 
> the max disk size allowed a function of the BIOS or just the operating 
> system?
> 
> And, if I just shut the system down (Fedora Core 5) and install the new 
> drive, will it be detected automatically when I restart? And how do I 
> make use of it so my whole disk space looks larger?
> 
> For example, I have one user that's close to using the entire 40G hard 
> disk (less OS stuff)... can I add a new hard disk, and somehow make that 
> space available as part of /home so that user can just "grow onto the 
> new drive"?
> 
> I do have LVM, but I've done anything with it since first choosing that 
> option when installing way back back when?
> 
> Are there features in FC6 to make this better? Is it worth waiting for? 
> (FC6 is only a week or two away last I saw)
> 
> Thanks for any tips/pointers/caveats. :-)

Since you used LVM when installing, this should go quite smoothly.

There should be no problems with the BIOS or compatibility.

You'll need to use your partitioning tool of choice to create a 
partition of type "LVM Physical Volume" on the new disk. You can then 
create a new physical volume on that partition (pvcreate), add the 
physical volume to your existing volume group (vgextend) and then resize 
the logical volume(s) that your Linux filesystem(s) are on (lvextend) to 
take advantage of the extra space. You can then resize the filesystem(s) 
themselves (resize2fs or ext2online).

If you do a fresh install of FC6 when it comes out, it should use both 
disks by default, so it might just be easier to do that, if you can back 
up your data somewhere whilst you do it.

Paul.