Debian Tutorials Copy/Paste tutorials for Debian Linux

Add a second hard disk

In this tutorial we will add a second hard drive to our machine running Debian linux.

If you have just added a virtual disk, make sure you restart the virtual machine before mounting the new disk.

First we'll have to find out what the device name is for this disk

fdisk -l


This will give you output similar to this:

Disk /dev/sda: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table


Next we'll partion the new disk using the following command:

cfdisk /dev/sdb

New -> Primary -> Specify size in MB
Write
Quit


Format the new disk using the ext3 filessystem

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1


Mounting the drive to a new folder

mkdir /disk2
mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /disk2


You can name the folder whatever your want and place it in subfolders of another drive, for example /var/disk2

Add the new drive to fstab so that it will automatically mount when we reboot the machine. Add the following line to your fstab file (pico /etc/fstab)

/dev/sdb1 /disk2 ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1


Now your new hard disk is mounted.