With my warranty about to expire, thoughts of drive upgrades come to mind. My needs are modest and I want to watch the $$$, so here are my thoughts. I'm looking to see if anybody with more Empeg fs experience can poke holes in this or other wise warm me away. Steps:

1) Add 20GB IBM as drive #2 to my existing 12GB per FAQ. Result: 32GB
2) When $/GB ratio drops further, obtain a 30 or 45 GB drive.
3) Pull 12GB Drive #1 and put in a PC chassis that I use for "whatever" using a 2.5" IDE adapter; do the same with the new 30/48GB drive.
4) Boot off a floppy and clone the 12GB to the 30/48 GB with Ghost, choosing "expand to fill all space" (alternatively, boot off a floppy and use PartitionMagic to adjust partition sizes).
5) Install 30/48 GB drive as drive #1 (keep original drive on shelf). Result: 50-68GB. Should be enough!
6) Test

When drive prices drop yet again, if 50-68 GB isn't enough, repeat this process with Drive #2, then again with #1, then with #2....

The old drives? Well, not sure. Amazing how quickly once-huge drives approach zero value.

I have cloned disks with ext2 fs in just this fashion on a few Linux boxes. Anything unusual in this situation I should look for?

Jim

Edited by jimhogan on 03/08/01 10:21 PM.

My only comment: Don't use Ghost. The empeg partitions need to be set up carefully, and those imaging programs won't do it correctly. At least that's what I remember reading before.

___________
Tony Fabris

Hi.

I would put it in a different way:
- initialize new drive using the builder upgrade
- clone the music partition only from the old drive to the (freshly intialized) new one.

cu,
sven

proud MkII owner (12GB blue/green/smoked, #080000113)

Thanks for the cautions, both of you. There's a certain mystery in the "builder" upgrade process and in this thing called "pumping" that I should search the BBS/FAQs to better understanding. I mean, *pumping* the drives? Don't people go to jail for that?

As a devout follower of the god LazyBoy, I may just have to give the Ghost/PartitionMagic thing a whirl once since I could just try cloning my existing 12G to a new 20 (Ghost sector copy followed by PM resize) without altering the 12GB. I can then report back, for good or ill ("Waaah! My Empeg won't boot!") One thing I've noticed is that a number of on-line suppliers (I've used WestTech in CA) that used to have IBM/other laptop drives in their inventory are not showing much at present. I suppose it could be supply shortages, but I'm more inclined to think that it's economic/inventory pressure that's manifested more noticably by eTailers.

Recession paranoia?

Jim

The problem with using something like Ghost, if I recall, is that it appears to work OK at first. Until the next time you try to apply a software upgrade, and then it gets the start/end points of the partitions wrong and erases your music partition. At least that's what I recall happening.

Do use the builder upgrade to format the new drive. Don't use Ghost.

___________
Tony Fabris

Last time I tried, I couldn't get ghost to work with ext2 anyway. I gave up and used fdisk/mke2fs/tar. Much easier.


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

How do you plug a notebook drive into a standard 40 pin desktop hard drive cable? My warranty is up in a month or so and I want to create an image of my hd.

Sean

I got (2) 2.5" IDE drive adapters from www.cyberguys.com for about $15 each. I'm sure there are other sources, but this place was a good, cheap source for RJ45 patch cords including the 1-foot version I plan to use in my much-delayed rack-mount Empeg box (Just a sled and I'll be done!).

After reading Tony's comments and reading up a bit more on Empeg raw disk access and boundaries, doesn't look like there's too much point to trying to clone/expand to larger disks, but it still could be good for backing up music partitions to 3.5 drives. Just got a 7200 rpm 60 GB Saturday for $190. With 30GB 2.5 inch drives coming into range of 20GB units economically, I may just add a second drive to go from 12GB --> 42GB and avoid the system builder upgrade for a while (*if* I can address the new 30GB drive without a software/builder upgrade. More research...)

Jim

Cool thanks for the link.

Sean