[Bio-Linux] How to add more disk space to my Biolinux

[Tim Booth]

Hi Martin,

On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 12:29 +0000, Ostrowski, Martin wrote:
> Hi Tim and Ashley,
> 
> I was thinking along the lines of beefing up the double drive system
> of the standard Biolinux in one of two ways:
> 
> 1. installing another internal HD on a fast BUS and moving portions
> of /var/db to the new drive. We have a lot of disk space used for
> public and private sequence databases, some of which are accessed for
> BLAST. Since these databases are also held elsewhere they do not need
> to be backed up so this could free up a lot of space for users files
> and reduce the amount of regular work for the machine.
> 
You mean /home/db, right?  This is probably the more sensible approach
given what you need the space for, and that backups are taken care of.

> 2. replacing the 2 x 80 GB HDs with 2 x 160, or 320 GB.
> 
> I think that the first option would be the best because it is the
> cheapest and sounds simple. I was hoping for a good guide or some tips
> for formating disks for linux and transferring the partitions to
> reduce the risk of deleting everything.

Well there is the relevant HOWTO:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Hard-Disk-Upgrade/index.html

But this is a little old and, while not actually wrong, it's not how I
would do things - I'd use a Knoppix bootable CD to avoid the
complexities of cloning a running system, GNU parted for the
partitioning and Rsync to copy the files.  Also that HOWTO talks about
LILO but we use GRUB, so you'd need to get to grips with the GRUB
installer to make your new disk actually boot.  Moving the entire
operating system to a new disk, whatever OS you use, is always a bit
tricky!

There is also the option of reinstalling from scratch on the new disks
(the standard installation script will cause /home to expand into all
the extra free disk space), then putting in the old drive and copying
the user accounts and /home over.  If you have a logbook of changes you
made to the system configuration you can go through and make them again
- it depends how much you customised.

One advantage of this is that the latest Bio-Linux image will install
Debian 4.0 "Etch".  This is the newest release and will be officially
announced by Debian in the next few weeks.  It is possible to upgrade
machines in-place, and Stewart will be sending out instructions for
this, but if you are going to be changing the disks anyway and want the
update then it may be easier to reinstall.

All swings and roundabouts really - and probably a moot point as I
suspect you will go for easy option 1!

Cheers,

TIM