Change Primary Drive

[Hardworking]

Hello All,

I am new to Arch and I have a question.

Last night I successfully installed the system onto a GoFlex Net, however, I have a question. The drive I had in the system last night is 500GB and I have another that is 750GB and would like to swap them over. Is this possible, or do I need to reinstall from scratch?

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

PS - Fantastic site!

Cheers
John

[kmihelich]

Just partition, format, label, extract the rootfs. Essentially steps 8-12, and 18 of the install guide, adjusted appropriately for the disk you're working on. After you have the new disk set up, shut down the plug, swap drives out, power it back on.

[Hardworking]

Excellent!! Thank you!!

I wasn't sure how to do it and didn't want to stuff it up.

I guess the only other question I need to know is what happens if that drive dies? If the OS is on that driver, what happens to the NAS?

I am a noob, and trying to educate myself, but its a bit of information overload right now.

[kmihelich]

If the drive dies, you just set up another drive.. nothing special. If you have data on another drive plugged in, that data isn't affected. It's like any other drive death scenario.

[Hardworking]

Ok... so what you are saying is.... If the drive dies, I should still be able to SSH into the NAS and setup a new one? Is that right?

That is what I am struggling to get my head around. In my head, no drive = no OS. I have been using Windows too long

[kmihelich]

You'd need a Linux computer to set up the drive. A live-cd from your favorite distribution will suffice.

[Hardworking]

Hmm.. OK.

I thought I could stick a new drive in and follow the steps on the site to set back up like I did the first time. Could I not do that?

[kmihelich]

Not on the GoFlex Net.

[Hardworking]

Right! Ok... well I need to look into what I need to do to protect myself from a failure.

I don't have another machine in the house running Linux - Only Macs. So I need to form a plan in case either the NAS itself or the primary drive dies.

[narwhal]

Related (?) question. I setup my new Pogoplug ArchiLinuxArm box w/ a 4GB thumb drive just to get started. And for convenience, plugged it into the front port. problem is, if I plug anything else into another port, it won't boot. I'm guessing I'm not plugged into the ZERO port, no? if not, any idea which is and what /etc config thing I might need to tweek to fix it? (I tried just plugging into the other ports but it doesn't appear to boot--well, the lights imply it booted, but no SSH access as when it's in the front port).

Thanks all!

oh, and how do numbers change if I add a powered USB Hub?

-narwhal