Storage related tutorial/FAQ

How to add an extra second hard drive on Linux LVM and increase the size of storage

in CentOS, Debian / Ubuntu, File system, Linux, RedHat and Friends, Storage, Suse last updated February 22, 2017

I have 250GB disk installed on my home Linux server. I just bought a brand new 250GB SATA disk and I want to add a new disk to my existing LVM volume to increase its size total size to 500GB. How do I add a disk to LVM and extend an LVM volume on Linux operating system?

How To Create Disk Image on Mac OS X With dd Command

in BASH Shell, Mac OS X, Storage, UNIX last updated October 18, 2015

How do I create or write to images to disk on Apple Mac OS X Unix operating system with dd command?

Linux WARNING: Duplicate VG name server1 LVM2 Error and Solution

in Linux, Storage, Troubleshooting last updated May 5, 2013

I recently added SSD to my home server and reloaded the operating system. However, when I try to access my dm-crypt based old disk, I am getting the following error:

Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... WARNING: Duplicate VG name server01: Existing bc7YA8-eEXt-1aA1-OHTr-zJkA-ucd0-DsbRTc (created here) takes precedence over RIKiar-w3MG-Gzh5-VFWq-bkRT-9IFc-ia8k87 WARNING: Duplicate VG name server01: Existing bc7YA8-eEXt-1aA1-OHTr-zJkA-ucd0-DsbRTc (created here) takes precedence over RIKiar-w3MG-Gzh5-VFWq-bkRT-9IFc-ia8k87 Found volume group "server01" using metadata type lvm2 Found volume group "server01" using metadata type lvm2

The problem is my volume group. I set to to server01 on both old and new hard disk. How can I rename old LVM2? How do I access my old hard disk?

Linux / UNIX: Smartctl Check Hard Disk Behind 3Ware RAID Card

in FreeBSD, Linux, Storage last updated June 25, 2011

I‘ve CentOS Linux and FreeBSD based server running using 3Ware (9650SE-2LP) RAID card. I know how to check hard disk behind Adaptec raid controllers, but how do I look at ATA / SATA disks behind 3ware SCSI RAID controllers using smartctl command?

Maximum Number of Disks In RAID 5

in Hardware, Storage, UNIX last updated January 21, 2011

Is there a limit to how many drives you can have in one RAID-5? What is the maximum number of physical drives recommended in a RAID-5 set?

Linux: Use smartctl To Check Disk Behind Adaptec RAID Controllers

in CentOS, Debian / Ubuntu, Linux, RedHat and Friends, Storage, Suse last updated December 21, 2015

I can use the “smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sdb” command to read hard disk health status directly connected to my system. But, how do I read smartctl command to check SAS or SCSI disk behind Adaptec RAID controller from the shell prompt on Linux operating system?

CentOS / Redhat: Create Software RAID 1 Array

in CentOS, RedHat and Friends, Storage last updated May 27, 2010

Recently, I’ve added another 73GB SAS disk to my Linux server after the installation. I’ve 30GB empty partition on old hard disk. How do I convert old /dev/sda3 and new /dev/sdb1 (both 30GB) into RAID 1 to improve NFS server speed and reliability?

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