On 08/15/2018 10:19 AM, Stephen P. Molnar wrote:
On 08/11/2018 04:50 PM, David Christensen wrote:
I recommend:
1. Get a small, fast, high-quality SSD to use as the system drive.
Connect it to motherboard port SATA6G_1.
2. Connect the optical drive to SATA6G_2.
3. Do a fresh install of Debian onto the SSD. Partition manually,
creating three primary partitions: /boot (1 GB), swap (1 GB), and root
(10 GB). Leave the remaining space unused. This will give you a
system image that can fit on a 16 GB USB flash drive, a 16 GB SDD, or
a 25 GB Blu-ray disc. The first allows you to carry your desktop in
your pocket, using laptops and PC's as convenient. The second gives
you the best performance. The third is for taking archival images.
4. Connect the 500 GB HDD to SATA6G_3 and the 2 TB drive to SATA6G_4.
Mount the HDD partitions and/or directories as desired. Adjust owner
and group identifiers as required.
5. Use the system drive for the operating system, applications, and
carefully-chosen data. (I keep my e-mail and CVS working directories
in my home directory on the system drive.) Keep the rest of your data
on the HDD's.
I've gotten really great help. At this point, I have installed the sdd
I assume you mean "SSD" (?).
to SATA6G_1 and have changed the rest of the ports.
I should have been more explicit:
2a. Disconnect the 500 GB and 2 TB drives.
Now, I'm almost
ready to install Stretch on the SDD
I assume you mean "SSD" (?).
and leave the current installation
on the 2GB drive Is there any chance of a conflict?
One of the last steps in the Debian Installer (d-i) is to run the GRUB
set up script. I believe the GRUB set up script is also run whenever
/boot/initrd.img is rebuilt (such as when the kernel is updated). There
many be other situations where the GRUB set up script is run.
I believe that whenever the GRUB set up script runs with the default
options, it will scan all the drives in your system looking for bootable
partitions and it will add those that it finds into GRUB's file
structures and/or scripts.
The easiest way to avoid confusion/ complexity is to make sure that you
have only one bootable partition whenever the GRUB set up script runs.
So, in addition to step 2a above, this implies another step:
4a. Run a partitioning program (fdisk, parted, etc.) and turn off any
bootable partition flags on the 500 GB drive and/or 2 TB drive.
I'm still a tad hesitant as it involved the BIOS. When I open the BIOS
(on boot with F2) the Eazy Mode Boot Priority only lets me select
between the Optical Drive and and the 500MB Western Digital, neither one
of which have the current OS. In order to boot the current OS on the
2TB HD I have to use the Boot Menu (F8) which has the all of the drives
on the Platform. I've not been able to figure how to add more drives to
the Boot Priority Menu. Will loading the bios defaults populate the
Boot Priority Menu? That's the action I'm a bit hesitant about.
I would boot into the BIOS setup utility, load the defaults, and then go
through the pages looking for items of interest. For example, switching
to advanced BIOS set up mode, enabling detailed messages during boot,
enabling full memory test during boot, etc.. STFW for any settings you
do not understand. Save when done, if your BIOS set up does not save
automatically.
This implies another step:
0. Have a second, working computer that you can use for web browsing
and e-mail while you work on the Linux computer.
Once again, thanks in advance.
Thanks for being persistent. :-)
David
