missing hard drive space

[Eberhard Roloff]

MG wrote:
> I have 5 hard drives equalling a 100gigs
I suspect you are referring to 1000 gigs which more or less is one TB

> don't think it's too much to ask to use em normally

Well this depends. Imho this setup is crazy in regard to the PC being 
potentially very lood and also your collection of disks might consume a 
lot of energy, but will most probably not offer good the performance of 
a recent big disk.

But this is not my problem.

> root at THUNDERCAT1:/home/max# sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
> 
> Disk /dev/sda: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x7e91a39a
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *           1       19647   157814496   83  Linux
> /dev/sda2           19648       20023     3020220    5  Extended
> /dev/sda5           19648       20023     3020188+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
> root at THUNDERCAT1:/home/max#

This is the disk that you are currently using for linux, one partiton 
for the system (/) and the other for swap

> root at THUNDERCAT1:/home/max# sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb
> 
> Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0xb51fa8fc
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdb1               1       19457   156288321    7  HPFS/NTFS

This looks like a Windows Disk from NT4/Win2k/XP/Vista..., you can 
access it by mounting it.



> root at THUNDERCAT1:/home/max# sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc
> 
> Disk /dev/sdc: 400.0 GB, 400088457216 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x524a757d
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdc1               1       48641   390706232    b  W95 FAT32

This is a larger disk with the old FAT filesystem coming from Win 
9.x/ME. It is easy to use this from linux. Just mount it.


> root at THUNDERCAT1:/home/max# sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdd
> 
> Disk /dev/sdd: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0x227f1d55
> 
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdd1               1         392     3148708+   7  HPFS/NTFS
> 
Again, this is a more recent NTFS disk from NT4, Win2k....

Conclusion:
What are you intending to achieve with this mess?

If I were you, I would most probably toss the two 160 GB disks, then use 
the 400 GB disk to have two windows partitions (C:\ and D:\) and finally 
use the remaining 320 GB disk for (at least) two linux partitions ("/" 
and /home). Btw. I would fix them with novibes frames, to minimize noise.

Should you (i.e. I being you) decide to stay with Linux, you can use the 
400 GB Disk for this and use the 320 Disk as an external USB Backup Disk 
(connected with an usb enclosure)

Surely, this is my advice for a desktop computer.

If you are installing a server system, things could be entirely 
different with RAID, LVM or similar kinds of things.

kind regards
Eberhard