How to format HDs SATAs on the LinuxMCE???

[bemficag]

That's the situation...
I have one hard drive for the system and 4 SATAs (320 gb each) for the data s, and I'd like to use Raid 5. Before I've tried to use Raid 5, I had used two SATAs with Raid 0, and because that some SATAs has partitions. Now I need to format all the SATAs to use Raid 5, but I don't know how to format it on LinuxMCE.

Thanks

[jonsnipes]

just had to mess with it earlier..  you can either use a linux live install cd and use the partitioner or open up a terminal and use fdisk to repartition and then mkfs to format...  heres a good tutorial
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Hard-Disk-Upgrade.html#PARTITION

[royw]

Howdy,

I originally used the "Linux Tuning Guide" at http://www.laukas.com/knbase/linux_special/ but it is off-line today.

As I recall when formatting ext3 partitions for my media (dvd images) disks, I used:

  mke2fs -j -b 4096 -m 1

where
  -j => ext3
  -b 4096 => 4096 byte blocks (the same that LinuxMCE used on 0710 beta 3 DVD install)
  -m 1 => 1% of filesystem blocks reserved for the super-user (i.e., I expect fewer large files, not many small files)

HTH,
Roy

[bemficag]

OK guys,

I tried to do what you told me, as below:

on the prompt, I typed...

      mkfs -t ext2 -c /dev/sda

the answer is...

      The command could not be located because /sbin is nt included in the PATH environment variable.
      This is most likely caused by the lack of administrative privileges associated with your user account.
      bash: mkfs: command not found

I did it also for:
   
      mke2fs -j -b 4096 -m 1

and I got the same answer.


What can I do??


Thanks
 

[royw]

Sorry, more basically, you need to perform system operations at the root privilege.  So use sudo.

  sudo mke2fs -j -b 4096 -m 1 /dev/{partition on your drive to format, like sda1, sda2, sdb1,...}

You may want/need to clear the current partition(s) then create new ones.  If so, then something like:

  sudo fdisk /dev/{your drive to partition, like sda, sdb,...}

My preferred distribution is gentoo, primarily because of the excellent documentation.  Here's gentoo's docs on disk preparation:

  http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?chap=4&part=1

Just remember that kubuntu uses sudo instead of a root account so prepend the commands with sudo.

HTH,
Roy

[bemficag]

Thank you Roy

[cirion]

I prefere partitioning with a GUI.
Try this mini livecd with just GParted:
http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/

When setting up RAID5 in LinuxMCE, there is no need to have any partitions.
Just wipe the HD's clean of all partitions, and boot LinuxMCE.
Then in the Webadmin you can add the drives to a RAID5.