Help activating available disk space, please.

[Robin Laing]

Nat Gross wrote:
> Hi;
> When I think of disk partions, I shiverrrrrrrr. BUT, I need to make
> use of disk space I know I have but need to make this safely. Please
> adivse.
> Following, is the result of fdisk -l:
> =======================
> Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks        Id       System
> /dev/hda1   *           1          13         104391        83       Linux
> /dev/hda2              14        3837    30716280     83    Linux
> /dev/hda3            9473        9726     2040255     82   Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/hda4            3838        9472    45263137+   5  Extended
> /dev/hda5            3838        8102    34258581    83   Linux
> 
> Partition table entries are not in disk order
> ==========================================
> [First] Does this mean that I have but one drive? (thought I had two.)
> Now, based on the following output from df, I *think* that hda4 is
> available for use.
> If so, how do I verify thats its empty, if it has a filesystem, and
> why is its block count larger than hda5 which brings the total gigs to
> far more than the 80G the drive has.
> 
> df -h
> =================================
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda2              29G   26G  2.3G  92% /
> none                  506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/hda5              33G   21G   11G  66% /usr
> =============================================
> 
> df
> ===========================================
> Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda2             30233928  26342300   2355816  92% /
> none                    517176         0    517176   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/hda5             33720764  21005124  11002712  66% /usr
> ===============================================
> 
> Thank you, all.
> -nat
> 
I am going to make another suggestion.

At the cost of hard drives, I would purchase a new drive and put that 
in.

If you have a second drive, then it isn't being used at all.  It would 
most likely be /dev/hdb*.  What happens if you run "fdisk /dev/hdb" ?

Drive space is cheap enough today to add extra drives where needed.  I 
have one drive for just temp backups.

Robin