I have been given a new(ish) PC. It's an i7 with 16GB of RAM. It currently has Windows 10 on a 128 GB SSD and has a couple of 1TB hard drives configured under Windows as RAID1 - they show up in the BIOS as RAID.
My intention is to remove the SSD and replace it with a 512GB SSD so that I can have Mageia 5 on it as well (that's the distro I have run for some time and I'm familiar with it). My question concerns the Windows RAID. Does anybody have any idea what linux will make of it?
If it helps, I've pulled the drive out and hooked it to my current machine via a USB adapter and it appears that it's a regular NTFS drive. But should there be any extra partitions or files on it to denote that it's part of a RAID array?
I also intend to have my /home partition on a separate 1TB drive. The installation on this machine has Windows 10 on a 500GB hard drive with Mageia on a 1TB drive. I'm thinking that I might just bung that drive in to the new machine and at some point remove the extra partitions from it leaving just the /home on there.
Once I've installed Mageia on the new SSD, is it as simple as amending the fstab file to point to that 1TB drive?
Or should I do something different altogether?
On 03/05/16 11:30, Chris Walker wrote:
I have been given a new(ish) PC. It's an i7 with 16GB of RAM. It currently has Windows 10 on a 128 GB SSD and has a couple of 1TB hard drives configured under Windows as RAID1 - they show up in the BIOS as RAID.
There's two ways of implementing RAID: Via hardware or via software. If it's showing in the BIOS as raid, that suggests to me that it's being implemented via hardware, unless the bios is smart enough to detect a software raid system.
If it's done via hardware, then I would guess that it will "just work" under linux, as the hardware will take all the strain of synchronising disk writes & reads etc. However, it might be the case that some sort of driver or something might be required to make it work under linux, and it may not understand linux file systems, which may mean that you have to keep using NTFS. I know linux can use NTFS, but I don't think the support for it is wonderful - I could be wrong though. I expect there will be software tools to help maintain the raid - add a new disk, force "fail" a faulty disk, rebuild the array etc. These may all be stored somewhere in the bios, or they may be external programs. If they are external programs, it is very likely that they will only run under WIndows. If that is the case, then if something goes wrong, you're stuffed if you don't have a working copy of windows on this machine.
If the raid is implemented under software, I don't know but I suspect that it won't be in a format that Linux software raid will understand and work with. I very much doubt that you'll have any joy with a Windows Software Raid.
I'm fairly sure that I was told when I set up raid, that it's basically best to use Linux Software Raid. Unless you're using some specialised server hardware, software raid is likely to be about as fast as a hardware raid system, but more importantly, you set it all up under linux, using linux tools, and a linux environment. If something goes wrong, you use linux to fix it. LINUX FTW*!
(*YMMV)
My intention is to remove the SSD and replace it with a 512GB SSD so that I can have Mageia 5 on it as well (that's the distro I have run for some time and I'm familiar with it). My question concerns the Windows RAID. Does anybody have any idea what linux will make of it?
If it helps, I've pulled the drive out and hooked it to my current machine via a USB adapter and it appears that it's a regular NTFS drive. But should there be any extra partitions or files on it to denote that it's part of a RAID array?
Probably, but how to find out? You'll have to look at any raid documentation that comes with the machine. If it's BIOS based, then don't expect much help as BIOS documentation is usually poor English and lacking in depth in my experience.
I also intend to have my /home partition on a separate 1TB drive. The installation on this machine has Windows 10 on a 500GB hard drive with Mageia on a 1TB drive. I'm thinking that I might just bung that drive in to the new machine and at some point remove the extra partitions from it leaving just the /home on there.
Once I've installed Mageia on the new SSD, is it as simple as amending the fstab file to point to that 1TB drive?
Could be. Tip. When adding/removing disks, drive letters will change sometimes necessitating changing the fstab to accomodate this. Consequently, they added a feature to fstab to allow you to identify the drive and partition using the UUID (Unique Unit Identifier) - basically a ID code for the partition. As long as you don't reformat the partition, the ID should remain the same. Consequently if you use fstab to say that the /home partition is in UUID=YXZ, then it will find it irrespective of drive letter, (sda1, sda2, sdb1, sdb2 etc).
Or should I do something different altogether?
Do you need raid? I have it. It adds reliability, but it also adds complexity. I wish I'd formatted my disks differently as I have partitions of a particular size. I gather that you can use LVM (Logical Volume Management) for more flexible partition control, but I have no idea how.
Good luck. Steve
On 10/05/16 09:19, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 03/05/16 11:30, Chris Walker wrote:
I have been given a new(ish) PC. It's an i7 with 16GB of RAM. It currently has Windows 10 on a 128 GB SSD and has a couple of 1TB hard drives configured under Windows as RAID1 - they show up in the BIOS as RAID.
There's two ways of implementing RAID: Via hardware or via software. If it's showing in the BIOS as raid, that suggests to me that it's being implemented via hardware, unless the bios is smart enough to detect a software raid system.
[SNIP]
Most on-board RAIDs are "fake RAID", and Linux generally doesn't play nicely with them - to be fair, it doesn't need to. The RAID part is handled by the BIOS and some drivers. The disks are just plain old disks and will appear (I strongly suspect) to Linux as just that; two ordinary drives.
Separate "proper" hardware RAID cards behave differently, and aren't "fake RAID".
If it were me, and I knew that Windows would never need to see these drives in their raw state (Samba would be ok, for instance) then I would blow them away and use software RAID with mdadm on Linux. Then they need to be set up as type fd (Linux RAID auto), and Linux will see them as RAID and behave accordingly.
I've done this loads of times.
Cheers, Laurie.
On Tue, 10 May 2016 09:41:01 +0100 Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com wrote:
On 10/05/16 09:19, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 03/05/16 11:30, Chris Walker wrote:
I have been given a new(ish) PC. It's an i7 with 16GB of RAM. It currently has Windows 10 on a 128 GB SSD and has a couple of 1TB hard drives configured under Windows as RAID1 - they show up in the BIOS as RAID.
There's two ways of implementing RAID: Via hardware or via software. If it's showing in the BIOS as raid, that suggests to me that it's being implemented via hardware, unless the bios is smart enough to detect a software raid system.
[SNIP]
Most on-board RAIDs are "fake RAID", and Linux generally doesn't play nicely with them - to be fair, it doesn't need to. The RAID part is handled by the BIOS and some drivers. The disks are just plain old disks and will appear (I strongly suspect) to Linux as just that; two ordinary drives.
Separate "proper" hardware RAID cards behave differently, and aren't "fake RAID".
If it were me, and I knew that Windows would never need to see these drives in their raw state (Samba would be ok, for instance) then I would blow them away and use software RAID with mdadm on Linux. Then they need to be set up as type fd (Linux RAID auto), and Linux will see them as RAID and behave accordingly.
I think the key there is 'blow them away'. As you will see from my reply to Steve, I'm pretty much convinced that I don't need the existing RAID on there so it will go.
I'll report back to let you know how it all went.
On Tue, 10 May 2016 10:11:36 +0100 Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2016 09:41:01 +0100 Laurie Brown laurie@brownowl.com wrote:
[snip]
I think the key there is 'blow them away'. As you will see from my reply to Steve, I'm pretty much convinced that I don't need the existing RAID on there so it will go.
I'll report back to let you know how it all went.
I finally managed to get into the BIOS.
I removed the RAID and rebooted. Windows didn't complain at all but using the inbuilt disc management stuff I could see that the second disc was not available with the message 'The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online'.
Fair enough and understandable. This machine was powered off at the time so using my wife's windows laptop and a USB adapter, I renamed the second drive.
So, on to swapping out the 120GB for the 512GB (not 512MB as I said in earlier reply!) SSD. Using this machine, I did a dd of the MBR, the 100MB Recovery partition and the 111GB main partition. I then tried writing those to the bigger disc. The MBR and the Recovery partitions wrote without a problem but the 111GB partition got to 23GB and sat there.
Trawling through the various DVDs I have here, I found a live version of Mageia 5 so once I'd bunged that in to the new i7 machine, I could then duplicate the 111GB partition to the new SSD. I removed the 120GB once that was done and after hooking up all the drives, I fired up Windows. Hmm. Once of the (ex-RAID) discs still isn't seen by Windows due to the same problem shown above. I assume I need to change the UUID of that drive (mentioned by Steve in his reply) but I thought that only happened after a format and although it *should* have the same stuff on it that the other disc has, I don't want to wipe it at this stage.
Ah well, onwards and upwards. I did earlier consider moving the 1TB linux disc from this machine but as I could easily end up with two non-working machines, I think rather safe than sorry and install everything from scratch on the new machine and then move stuff over as-and-when).
<sigh> Why is that when you want to register the new SSD on the Sandisk site, it asks for a serial number which is on the underside of the disc which is now securely bolted in and with the covers on the machine? :-(
On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 06:32:28PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
<sigh> Why is that when you want to register the new SSD on the Sandisk site, it asks for a serial number which is on the underside of the disc which is now securely bolted in and with the covers on the machine? :-(
You can usually pull the serial number for a drive from within linux using either hdparm or smartctl (you may need to install the smartmontools),
example:
sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
Adam
On Tue, 10 May 2016 22:00:26 +0100 Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 06:32:28PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
<sigh> Why is that when you want to register the new SSD on the Sandisk site, it asks for a serial number which is on the underside of the disc which is now securely bolted in and with the covers on the machine? :-(
You can usually pull the serial number for a drive from within linux using either hdparm or smartctl (you may need to install the smartmontools),
example:
sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
Unfortunately, linux isn't yet installed on that machine and appears to be having problems doing so. It complains about miscalculation on the size of the Windows partition. As I don't want a /home partition on there, I thought I would create the partitions manually but even doing that it fails.
My next thought is to check the validity of the various partitions when I copied them over from the smaller SSD.
On 11/05/16 12:42, Chris Walker wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2016 22:00:26 +0100 Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 06:32:28PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
<sigh> Why is that when you want to register the new SSD on the Sandisk site, it asks for a serial number which is on the underside of the disc which is now securely bolted in and with the covers on the machine? :-(
You can usually pull the serial number for a drive from within linux using either hdparm or smartctl (you may need to install the smartmontools),
example:
sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
Unfortunately, linux isn't yet installed on that machine and appears to be having problems doing so. It complains about miscalculation on the size of the Windows partition. As I don't want a /home partition on there, I thought I would create the partitions manually but even doing that it fails.
My next thought is to check the validity of the various partitions when I copied them over from the smaller SSD.
I've had joy with disk operations recently using the "USB Drive creator" to create a lightweight live installation of XUbuntu on a USB Hard disk and using that to run gparted to fix up the disk. You could try this (or with a USB stick), or a live CD, or a specific disk rescue system (testdisk and system rescue are I think two such).
(NB, using the USB disk creator, there's some sort of bug in the version I've got so it says "xyz is not a boot image" or something like that. To fix that, I just have to type live <enter> and then it boots.)
Good luck.
Steve
On Wed, 11 May 2016 13:56:46 +0100 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 11/05/16 12:42, Chris Walker wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2016 22:00:26 +0100 Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 06:32:28PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
<sigh> Why is that when you want to register the new SSD on the Sandisk site, it asks for a serial number which is on the underside of the disc which is now securely bolted in and with the covers on the machine? :-(
You can usually pull the serial number for a drive from within linux using either hdparm or smartctl (you may need to install the smartmontools),
example:
sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda
Unfortunately, linux isn't yet installed on that machine and appears to be having problems doing so. It complains about miscalculation on the size of the Windows partition. As I don't want a /home partition on there, I thought I would create the partitions manually but even doing that it fails.
My next thought is to check the validity of the various partitions when I copied them over from the smaller SSD.
I've had joy with disk operations recently using the "USB Drive creator" to create a lightweight live installation of XUbuntu on a USB Hard disk and using that to run gparted to fix up the disk. You could try this (or with a USB stick), or a live CD, or a specific disk rescue system (testdisk and system rescue are I think two such).
(NB, using the USB disk creator, there's some sort of bug in the version I've got so it says "xyz is not a boot image" or something like that. To fix that, I just have to type live <enter> and then it boots.)
I grabbed a couple of programs yesterday for Windows but isodumper is available in Mageia5 (that's also what I'm running here) so once I buy myself a USB stick, I'll give that a go. I think I might also have a crack at generating some sort of install media for Windows, perhaps reinstalling the original 120GB SSD, so that I can build the system from scratch, just in case the original install done by my late friend was carried out in non UEFI mode. I can tell that from looking at the disc in Windows though - this page gives more information on that - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_in_dual_boot_with_Windows8_and_over
There's also this page to help me with installing from USB - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_Media#Dump_Mageia_ISO_on_a_USB_flash...
On Thu, 12 May 2016 09:29:46 +0100 Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
[snip]
I grabbed a couple of programs yesterday for Windows but isodumper is available in Mageia5 (that's also what I'm running here) so once I buy myself a USB stick, I'll give that a go. I think I might also have a crack at generating some sort of install media for Windows, perhaps reinstalling the original 120GB SSD, so that I can build the system from scratch, just in case the original install done by my late friend was carried out in non UEFI mode. I can tell that from looking at the disc in Windows though - this page gives more information on that - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_in_dual_boot_with_Windows8_and_over
Once I'd read that page I could see that the Windows installation wasn't using UEFI. I could have carried on with the installation but decided that I wanted UEFI so I've now updated the BIOS. I wiped the new SSD again and restarted the Windows installation using a 64GB USB stick on which I'd created installation media from the 120GB SSD.
That went well and as soon as the installation started I could see that it wanted to create an EFI partition. Windows is now installed but I have lost access to the DVD drive and also the ability to boot from USB. So something weird (or at least, something else that I don't understand) is going on and which I'll have to investigate further.
There's also this page to help me with installing from USB - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_Media#Dump_Mageia_ISO_on_a_USB_flash...
I've created the USB linux install using dd and that appears ok when viewed on this machine. I just need to resolve the problem on the new machine and can then complete the installation there.
On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 12:42:31PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
Unfortunately, linux isn't yet installed on that machine and appears to be having problems doing so. It complains about miscalculation on the size of the Windows partition. As I don't want a /home partition on there, I thought I would create the partitions manually but even doing that it fails.
Getting a live usb boot on there should be possible and still faster than taking it apart.
Adam
On Wed, 11 May 2016 19:11:11 +0100 Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 12:42:31PM +0100, Chris Walker wrote:
Unfortunately, linux isn't yet installed on that machine and appears to be having problems doing so. It complains about miscalculation on the size of the Windows partition. As I don't want a /home partition on there, I thought I would create the partitions manually but even doing that it fails.
Getting a live usb boot on there should be possible and still faster than taking it apart.
There appears to be another issue which might be down to me, or the machine. This is the first time I've had a machine with a UEFI BIOS and despite setting the DVD drive to UEFI, it always seems to select the non UEFI mode instead.
So I think a trip into Wymondham sometime today to buy myself a large(ish) USB stick to practice with is in order.
I'll have to fit that in round a furniture delivery so it might have to wait until tomorrow to make any further progress.
I looked at this page - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installing_on_systems_with_UEFI_firmware - which demonstrates that the machine has booted into the correct mode and most of the time, the new one doesn't.
I've also grabbed the 'handbook' from the Asus site to see if there's anything in that to help. If in doubt, RTFM ;-)
On Tue, 10 May 2016 09:19:52 +0100 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 03/05/16 11:30, Chris Walker wrote:
I have been given a new(ish) PC. It's an i7 with 16GB of RAM. It currently has Windows 10 on a 128 GB SSD and has a couple of 1TB hard drives configured under Windows as RAID1 - they show up in the BIOS as RAID.
[snip]
If it helps, I've pulled the drive out and hooked it to my current machine via a USB adapter and it appears that it's a regular NTFS drive. But should there be any extra partitions or files on it to denote that it's part of a RAID array?
Probably, but how to find out? You'll have to look at any raid documentation that comes with the machine. If it's BIOS based, then don't expect much help as BIOS documentation is usually poor English and lacking in depth in my experience.
The machine didn't come with any documentation as it was left to me in a will. Sadly the owner passed away last year and his wife is clearing out all his old stuff - she's filled 3 skips so far!
I'll pop off the side cover again on the PC and take a look at the motherboard markings and grab a handbook from the manufacturer's site.
I also intend to have my /home partition on a separate 1TB drive. The installation on this machine has Windows 10 on a 500GB hard drive with Mageia on a 1TB drive. I'm thinking that I might just bung that drive in to the new machine and at some point remove the extra partitions from it leaving just the /home on there.
Once I've installed Mageia on the new SSD, is it as simple as amending the fstab file to point to that 1TB drive?
Could be. Tip. When adding/removing disks, drive letters will change sometimes necessitating changing the fstab to accomodate this. Consequently, they added a feature to fstab to allow you to identify the drive and partition using the UUID (Unique Unit Identifier) - basically a ID code for the partition. As long as you don't reformat the partition, the ID should remain the same. Consequently if you use fstab to say that the /home partition is in UUID=YXZ, then it will find it irrespective of drive letter, (sda1, sda2, sdb1, sdb2 etc).
A new 512MB SSD is arriving this morning according to the text message I received this morning from Scan. So I can have a play then.
Or should I do something different altogether?
Do you need raid? I have it. It adds reliability, but it also adds complexity. I wish I'd formatted my disks differently as I have partitions of a particular size. I gather that you can use LVM (Logical Volume Management) for more flexible partition control, but I have no idea how.
I already have a NAS with RAID on it so I'm beginning to think that I'll just remove the pictures from the new i7 machine (I need to keep those for his family in Australia) and wipe the RAID (once I can get into the BIOS) and just use the discs as normal.
I think the BIOS problem relates to the keyboard. The machine doesn't recognise the Ctrl-I keys when held down at the start but I'll just have to borrow the keyboard from a Raspberry Pi to see if that works instead.
On 10 May 2016 at 10:09, Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
I'll pop off the side cover again on the PC and take a look at the motherboard markings and grab a handbook from the manufacturer's site.
If it doesn't have a dedicated RAID card then it's almost certainly software RAID (aka fakeraid) and you'll benefit from turning it off and wiping the disks once you have any data off that you want.
If it has a dedicated RAID card then it's quite possibly still fakeraid but a model search will confirm. I'd be surprised if you have a separate card though.
I think the BIOS problem relates to the keyboard. The machine doesn't recognise the Ctrl-I keys when held down at the start but I'll just have to borrow the keyboard from a Raspberry Pi to see if that works instead.
If you can get into BIOS there's usually a setting for how it handles legacy USB devices. Try changing that setting, often that'll make the keyboard visible during the boot process if it wasn't before. Although I can't see why a new machine would have that sort of issue.
On Tue, 10 May 2016 16:04:36 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk wrote:
On 10 May 2016 at 10:09, Chris Walker alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk wrote:
[snip]
If you can get into BIOS there's usually a setting for how it handles legacy USB devices. Try changing that setting, often that'll make the keyboard visible during the boot process if it wasn't before. Although I can't see why a new machine would have that sort of issue.
Thanks for the advice on RAID and also on legacy USB. I didn't realise (silly me) that a keyboard would be one of the legacy items. I need to be clear on something else. The machine is new to me, it isn't brand spanking new.
I used a PS/2 to USB adapter to allow me into the BIOS so I'll take another look at the BIOS for legacy USB.
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Adam Bower -
Chris Walker -
Laurie Brown -
Mark Rogers -
steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk