[GTALUG] Making a second HD transparent to the user

[Christopher Browne]

On 9 April 2016 at 11:51, <phiscock at ee.ryerson.ca> wrote:

> The time is coming when I will have to increase my hard drive storage. I
> could backup, replace the current drive with something larger, and then
> copy the backup to the new, larger drive.
>
> Or I could add a second SATA drive. Is it possible to configure that
> second drive so that it seamlessly appears as an increase of size of the
> first drive?
>
>
If you were using a filesystem that supports multiple partitions, then
sure, you could do that.

I remember that being a big deal with Digital AdvFS, a long time ago, on
architectures now far, far away... <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdvFS>

Filesystems you could actually choose that support adding multiple block
devices to a filesystem include BTRFS (I have used the facility) and
probably ZFS.

Unfortunately, if you make your filesystem dependent on multiple drives all
functioning properly, you have accepted a pretty big dollop of risk, so I'd
be inclined, myself, to copy material over to the new, larger drive.  (The
problem is, and I did run into this, that if ANY drive fails, there's a
fair chance you wind up losing the entirety of the filesystem.)  But if
your appetite for risk is higher, that may be  acceptable.  (I accepted the
risk, at the time.)

-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
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