Help activating available disk space, please.

[Robin Laing]

Nat Gross wrote:
> 
>>Drive space is cheap enough today to add extra drives where needed.  I
>>have one drive for just temp backups.
> 
> You THINK you have one for backups. In reality you have it for it was
> the will of god you fedex that el-cheapo drive to me NOW!

Pulled it out of a 386 or was it a P90 or some old computer.  Around 
this town, I can get a new HD for ~50.  The cost of FeEx would be 
worth more than the drive.  I almost pulled one out of a computer that 
was in the garbage on the weekend.

> 
> But to answer your well-made point anyhow; There is a certain amount
> of RISK associated in opening a server (where down-time counts),
> adding hardware, etc etc. The thing  is running. Let's not break it.
> I'd rather get a new CPU WITH a DRIVE, for that matter. (How come you
> didn't advise me on that<g>? Ah, because you don't have a spare laying
> around.)
> 
> Fun talking to you. Take care.
> -nat
> 

I do agree with you.  There is, as I feel, more risk trying to mess 
with partitions on a server without going to "init 1" which takes it 
off line as well.  In either case the data should be backed up first. 
  With a second drive the drive could be formatted and then all the 
data moved and put on line with only the time of taking the server off 
of line to install the drive.  You cannot change partition tables on a 
drive that is mounted if I am correct.

My feeling is if you are running a critical server without the ability 
to afford a second drive, there is a problem.  When I ran servers, the 
cost of a 9gig SCSI drive was almost $8,000 dollars and I still had a 
second drive in case of failure.  This was costly after one failed 
under warranty and the company would not replace it as they were about 
to go into receivership.

I also look at the cost and risk of not having a drive to copy the 
data to before messing with the partition table.

Don't get me wrong.  I would love to install 600Gigs of spare drive 
while I do some re-arranging of my system but that isn't going to 
happen.  So I have to beg, borrow and steal some disk space to do 
almost what you are doing.

On this site, a Maxtor 120 gig ATA drive is 67.99 in our lower 
Canadian Dollars amount.  I have to go to 160 gigs before I am forced 
over the $100 amount.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Category/category_hdd.asp