Linux Mint Storage Question

[Exp]

Hey LTT forum!

  I'm excited to have built my first PC from scratch for one of my relatives! In terms of storage, we have a 128GB Crucial SSD and two 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDDs, which we are running in RAID 1. We're running Linux Mint 17.1 on it, but I installed the OS on the SSD for faster boot times. The questions I have are: How will Linux Mint see the Seagate Drives (that are running in RAID 1)? How will I be able to use the storage on those drives?

  Any and all help and advice would be appreciated! I can provide more information if needed. Thanks for reading!

[manikyath]

you need to use gparted to format the drives accordingly, if they arent formatted already. (guessing they are in hardware raid)

 

after that, there is a thing called "disks" if i recall correctly, where you can mount partitions on the locations you want, for example /storage/ would go to your raid array.

[Exp]

you need to use gparted to format the drives accordingly, if they arent formatted already. (guessing they are in hardware raid)

 

after that, there is a thing called "disks" if i recall correctly, where you can mount partitions on the locations you want, for example /storage/ would go to your raid array.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention that it is hardware raid from Intel Matrix Storage Manager. I don't mean to sound like a complete idiot here, but how do I know if the drives are formatted or not?

[manikyath]

Oh yea, I forgot to mention that it is hardware raid from Intel Matrix Storage Manager. I don't mean to sound like a complete idiot here, but how do I know if the drives are formatted or not?

did you already format them? if no, then you still need to do it.

[Guest]

If it's hardware raid, you'll need to format them in Mint. There are lots of tools to do this, like gdisk (for GPT) or fdisk (for MBR), among others. If you will only be using Linux, I would format them as Ext4 or BTRFS (if you feel daring. BTRFS isn't totally stable). If you plan on using them with other OSs like Windows, I would format them as ExFAT if possible. After you do this, if the drives don't auto mount on startup, you can add them to your /etc/fstab file. You can read up on doing this around the web, but if you need help with that, I can lend a hand.

[l11h]

with regards to mounting this is really simple. 

Make sure the O/S can see the Seagate drive, you can find this out by doing fdisk -l or looking in /dev/sd*

 

Your main disk will be sda so the Seagate will be sdb (normally this is the case)

 

Like manikyah said you mount the drive to a folder the syntax is the following: 

mount /dev/sdb1 /storage

 

And that's it simple as that. 

 

You can edit the /etc/fstab to auto-mount the drive at boot up, example could be: 

/dev/sdb1 /storage ext4 defaults 0 2

 

ext4 is the file system type, if you do not know then just doing df -T will tell you the type

 

I hope this helps. 

[Exp]

did you already format them? if no, then you still need to do it.

 

If it's hardware raid, you'll need to format them in Mint. There are lots of tools to do this, like gdisk (for GPT) or fdisk (for MBR), among others. If you will only be using Linux, I would format them as Ext4 or BTRFS (if you feel daring. BTRFS isn't totally stable). If you plan on using them with other OSs like Windows, I would format them as ExFAT if possible. After you do this, if the drives don't auto mount on startup, you can add them to your /etc/fstab file. You can read up on doing this around the web, but if you need help with that, I can lend a hand.

Thank you both for the help!

  No I didn't format them myself, so I guess I need to do that.

  My concern is if I've set up the hardware RAID correctly. I went through the Intel RAID BIOS and set it up as RAID 1, named it, selected the two HDDs to use, and selected all 938.xx GB it said it could use. I don't know exactly why it didn't use closer to the full 1TB, but I don't know if that matters.

  Inside the LinuxMint operating system, under the "Disks" program, under "Disk Drives," it seems that LinuxMint sees the two 1TB HDDs. If I remember correctly, if I configured the RAID 1 properly, LinuxMint should only see one 1TB storage device. Under the "Other Devices" category, still within the "Disks" program, it seems like Linux Mint sees a "1.0 TB Block Device." Is that the RAID 1 device that I should be formatting and partitioning?

  So I guess I need the answer to that before proceeding. I'll be trying to google up some resources, but I haven't had much luck with that so far. Again, any and all advice would be appreciated!

[Exp]

with regards to mounting this is really simple. 

Make sure the O/S can see the Seagate drive, you can find this out by doing fdisk -l or looking in /dev/sd*

 

Your main disk will be sda so the Seagate will be sdb (normally this is the case)

 

Like manikyah said you mount the drive to a folder the syntax is the following: 

mount /dev/sdb1 /storage

 

And that's it simple as that. 

 

You can edit the /etc/fstab to auto-mount the drive at boot up, example could be: 

/dev/sdb1 /storage ext4 defaults 0 2

 

ext4 is the file system type, if you do not know then just doing df -T will tell you the type

 

I hope this helps. 

  I guess, like my previous post said, the question would be: Is LinuxMint supposed to be seeing the two 1TB Seagate drives? That doesn't really make sense to me (likely because I'm quite new at this).

  Right now, my Crucial SSD is /dev/sda1, one Seagate HDD is /dev/sdb, and the other Seagate HDD is /dev/sdc. Also, the 1TB block device is /dev/dm-0. Would anyone know what the "1.0 TB Block Device" is?

  I just wanted the SSD to be a boot drive, so in an ideal world, only the OS, essential programs, and their updates would go to the SSD. I'd like all other data (pictures, documents, etc) to be on the RAID array by default, if that's possible.

[Guest]

Thank you both for the help!

  No I didn't format them myself, so I guess I need to do that.

  My concern is if I've set up the hardware RAID correctly. I went through the Intel RAID BIOS and set it up as RAID 1, named it, selected the two HDDs to use, and selected all 938.xx GB it said it could use. I don't know exactly why it didn't use closer to the full 1TB, but I don't know if that matters.

  Inside the LinuxMint operating system, under the "Disks" program, under "Disk Drives," it seems that LinuxMint sees the two 1TB HDDs. If I remember correctly, if I configured the RAID 1 properly, LinuxMint should only see one 1TB storage device. Under the "Other Devices" category, still within the "Disks" program, it seems like Linux Mint sees a "1.0 TB Block Device." Is that the RAID 1 device that I should be formatting and partitioning?

  So I guess I need the answer to that before proceeding. I'll be trying to google up some resources, but I haven't had much luck with that so far. Again, any and all advice would be appreciated!

Yes, that block device (dm-0) is the RAID array (at least it should be). There are still two drives in the system so Mint is showing you both the drives, dm-0 is a logical device, in this case, your RAID 1 array.

 

Edit: And from what you described, you want dm-0 to be your /home drive. This can be configured (normally when installing your system, but you can do it afterwards too I think). 

[Exp]

Yes, that block device (dm-0) is the RAID array. There are still two drives in the system so Mint is showing you both the drives, dm-0 is a logical device, in this case, your RAID 1 array.

  Ok, excellent! Sounds like it's set up properly! Thanks again for the help, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it!

  So to proceed, it sounds like I need to format it, partition it, and mount it to a folder. In terms of formatting it, on the "Disks" application (installed to LinuxMint by default), there's a "more actions" button. When I click on that, there is a Format option. Would that, by default use Ext4? And should I be using that application to Format the RAID array?

  After that, I could use the one of the applications mentioned in this thread (gparted, gdisk, and fdisk) to partition the array. Is there any partition configuration I should do? I talked to one of my friends that has built many computers before, and he said that I should just make the array one big partition.

  I don't know much about mounting, so I'll try to put some research into it (if there is any resource you'd all recommend me to read about it, please link it!). It sounds like it just points a specific directory to that array. If that's the case, is there a specific directory that I should assign it to, so that all files aside from the OS, essential programs, and their updates, go on the array?

[Guest]

  Ok, excellent! Sounds like it's set up properly! Thanks again for the help, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it!

  So to proceed, it sounds like I need to format it, partition it, and mount it to a folder. In terms of formatting it, on the "Disks" application (installed to LinuxMint by default), there's a "more actions" button. When I click on that, there is a Format option. Would that, by default use Ext4? And should I be using that application to Format the RAID array?

  After that, I could use the one of the applications mentioned in this thread (gparted, gdisk, and fdisk) to partition the array. Is there any partition configuration I should do? I talked to one of my friends that has built many computers before, and he said that I should just make the array one big partition.

  I don't know much about mounting, so I'll try to put some research into it (if there is any resource you'd all recommend me to read about it, please link it!). It sounds like it just points a specific directory to that array. If that's the case, is there a specific directory that I should assign it to, so that all files aside from the OS, essential programs, and their updates, go on the array?

So if you want to partition it, you're going to want to create the partition before you format anything. I would guess that the default option in that Disks program would be Ext4, but I can't be sure. But that program would probably be fine to partition it. What you're doing is pretty straight forward. If you were doing some sort of big LVM disk that would be another story. As to whether or not you should partition it is up to you and your needs. If you need part of it to be usable on Windows, it might be a good idea to partition it. Or if you wanted part of it to be a /boot partition or something. It really just comes down to your needs. As for mounting, what you are describing is a /home partition, or in your case, /home array. In Mint, /home is the equivalent to the My Documents folder in Windows. Its just all of your own personal stuff, but all system files, programs, etc will go on the SSD. You can find plenty of guides online on how to set this up. Here is an article I found on doing this with Ubuntu (which is very similar to Mint) http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to-create-a-separate-home-partition-after-installing-ubuntu/

[Exp]

So if you want to partition it, you're going to want to create the partition before you format anything. I would guess that the default option in that Disks program would be Ext4, but I can't be sure. But that program would probably be fine to partition it. What you're doing is pretty straight forward. If you were doing some sort of big LVM disk that would be another story. As to whether or not you should partition it is up to you and your needs. If you need part of it to be usable on Windows, it might be a good idea to partition it. Or if you wanted part of it to be a /boot partition or something. It really just comes down to your needs. As for mounting, what you are describing is a /home partition, or in your case, /home array. In Mint, /home is the equivalent to the My Documents folder in Windows. Its just all of your own personal stuff, but all system files, programs, etc will go on the SSD. You can find plenty of guides online on how to set this up. Here is an article I found on doing this with Ubuntu (which is very similar to Mint) http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to-create-a-separate-home-partition-after-installing-ubuntu/

Edit: I tried messing with some things, following a few tutorials, but I ended up breaking things. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have tried anything so hastily. But, after that, I had to reinstall everything, which opened the door to redoing the partitions, this time, manually. I was able to set the RAID array mounted as the /home directory, and the SSD for the root directory, as well as a swap partition. I believe the whole build can be considered complete now, but I don't want to jinx anything!

  Thank you all for the great help! I know I couldn't have done it without you! I'll try to pay it forward in the forums, in a category that I'm a bit better with.

Edited February 22, 2015 by Exp