[plug] Disk Partitioning & Dial on Demand questions

[Bret Busby]

Chris Griffin wrote:
> 
> I have a system at home that I am setting up for a friend that posses some
> interesting questions, well for me anyway, and would appreciate some
> help/advice.
> 
> The system has two drives in it. The first is a 4GB of which I can have
> 1Gig for the system, the rest is for user data area. With all of the system
> and facilities I had to install, it left me with that partition 93% full.
> For this reason I fitted an old 240MB drive as a secondary and would like
> to add this into the system. This raises two questions for me.
> First, should I just move /var onto this drive or should I move other areas
> onto it as well.
> Secondly, how do I move it over without having to reinstall the system?
> 

Firstly, I am no guru, and my Linux knowledge is limited.

However, I believe that it has been mentioned on the list, in the past, that it
could be a good idea, to have the swap partition on a separate physical drive,
as this could cause parallel disk access, which would increase performance,
provided the physical drive on which the swap partition resides, is not too much
slower than the primary hard disk. The 240MB HDD, because of its size, and
therefore its age, may not increase performance, and may instead reduce
performance, but, having the swap partition on that drive could be useful, apart
from performance.

Depending on what applications are to be run on Linux, it is my understanding
that 2GB is really needed for Linux and its utilities, applications, etc, apart
from the data.

I am running Red Hat 5.2, and I probably have more packages installed than is
absolutely necessary, and, while I have about 300-400 MB of space on the
partition occupied by data, I have only about 2MB free in a 2GB partition.

Also, while you have installed all the stuff that you believe is necessary, it
is inevitable that more will be wanted, and the 1GB will be inadequate.

I believe that the principle is named Parkinson's Law; " No matter how big the
capacity of the hard drive, it will become full", or, something to that effect.

If 1GB is all that can be used for Linux on the HDD, depending on your friend's
circumstances, I suggest buying another hard drive. 6GB hard drives can, I
believe, still be bought, and they are under $200. If you buy a new drive, such
as a 6GB drive (an 8GB would probably be better), and use that as the primary
hard drive, it should be faster than the 4GB drive, which could be devoted to
data.

-- 

Bret Busby

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