How do I add an additional hard drive?

Question

I am going to put an additional (non-USB) hard drive in my system. I already have Ubuntu on my other hard drive so I do not want to install Ubuntu on the additional drive but only use it for storage. How do I add the additional hard drive to my Ubuntu system, e.g. make Ubuntu recognize it and mount it properly?

Answer 1

1 Partition

The easiest and user-friendly way is probably to use gparted after you have installed your new HDD and boot your machine:

sudo gparted

Then you create partitions, by setting their size and type.
Hint: since your hard drive is additional storage space, you probably want to create one single big partition with the type of ext4.

gparted is a very easy to use tool, and yet very advanced.

2 Mount

After you are done creating your partitions (most likely it will be just one ext4 data partition, since this is your additional storage drive), you need to permanently mount it.

At this step you already know what names your new partition(-s) have. If not sure, following command will remind you about existing drives and partitions on them:

sudo fdisk -l

This will output something like this (intentionally skipped /dev/sda system drive info):

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
....

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000814e3

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  Syste
/dev/sdb1               1      243201  1953512001   83  Linux

Output states, that your new partition is /dev/sdb1. Now you need to mount it to utilize it's precious space. To achieve this, you need to perform three simple steps:

2.1 Create a mount point

sudo mkdir /hdd

2.2 Edit /etc/fstab

Open /etc/fstab file with root permissions:

sudo vim /etc/fstab

And add following to the end of the file:

/dev/sdb1    /hdd    ext4    defaults    0    0

2.3 Mount partition

Last step and you're done!

mount /hdd

Links

• fdisk partitioning tutorial, command line alternative.
• GParted tutorial.

Answer 2

There is a good description how to add another drive here:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingANewHardDrive

Basically you have to partition the new disk, create a file system on it and then mount it. Thats is the easy way. Another way would be to use lvm and create virtual disks on the new drive. That would give you more flexibility:

• http://www.davelachapelle.ca/guides/ubuntu-lvm-guide/

Answer 3

Modern drives are huge and need to be partitioned with GPT to allow 2TB+ in size.

1. Find your disk:

   blkid
   

   If it is already formatted, you should see entry like /dev/sdb1 with UUID and PARTUUID settings.

2. If your disk is not formatted, create a new partition:

   cgdisk /dev/sdb
   

   and format it:

   mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdb1
   

3. Create directory for your hdd:

   mkdir /media/storage
   

4. Run blkid again, note UUID for your /dev/sdb1 partition and add it into /etc/fstab (make backup of fstab by installing etckeeper - this file is important):

   UUID="b4c93..."  /media/storage  ext4  defaults  0  2
   

   fstab wiki page describes what does it mean. This should make it persistent over reboots.

5. Finally mount it without rebooting to test:

   mount -av