This is a simple howto designed to show you the basics of adding a new hard disk to an existing system using fdisk and mkfs.
Applicable to Centos Versions
- Centos All Versions
Requirements
- New Hard Disk supported by your system motherboard.
- Existing Centos base install.
Doing the Work
Once your drive is plugged, detected by the system bios and you are booted into your system open a terminal and type: su –login
- Finding the hard disk devices your computer sees attached.
- At the bottom we see: “Disk /dev/sdl doesn’t contain a valid partition table“, this is what we are looking for, now we can create the partitions. For this example, we’re taking a 250GB Maxtor hard disk and using the entire space as one large partition. If you want more than one partition on your new disk you can alter this when you choose the size of your new partitions using +sizeM (megabytes) or +sizeK (Kilobytes).
- Now that we’ve created the partition scheme we’d like, we need to write the changes to the disk partition table.
- Now we need to create a filesystem on the new partition. For this howto we will use the native linux filesystem (ext3 or type 83). Make note of the superblock backups for this new disk in case an fsck is required and the main journal is corrupted or missing. You can point fsck to a backup superblock provided you thought ahead and recorded them.
- Mounting the new disk on /mnt/250GB so we can put data on it and use it normally. First, we create the directory with the mkdir command. Second we mount the disk device into our newly created directory /mnt/250GB as read/write. Note: if you have trouble with directory permissions or not being allowed to write to the directory see: man chmod | man chown.
- Setting your drive up to automount on boot. For this we’ll edit the /etc/fstab file and add in the appropriate line save/exit. We’ll then tell the system to execute the fstab file with: mount -a and finally we’ll use: df -h to verify that the disk is indeed mounted and the system sees it where we expect.
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[root@quetzalcoatl ~]# fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 20.8 GB, 20847697920 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 40395 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 1016 512032+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 1017 5079 2047752 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda3 5080 40395 17799264 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 232581 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 232581 117220792+ 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdi: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdi1 1 30401 244196001 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdj: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes <br /><br /><br /> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdj1 1 9729 78148161 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdk: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 232581 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdk1 * 1 232576 117218241 83 Linux <strong>Disk /dev/sdl: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk /dev/sdl doesn't contain a valid partition table</strong> |
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[root@quetzalcoatl ~]# fdisk /dev/sdl Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable. The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 30515. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Command (m for help): m Command action a toggle a bootable flag b edit bsd disklabel c toggle the dos compatibility flag d delete a partition l list known partition types m print this menu n add a new partition o create a new empty DOS partition table p print the partition table q quit without saving changes s create a new empty Sun disklabel t change a partition's system id u change display/entry units v verify the partition table w write table to disk and exit x extra functionality (experts only) Command (m for help): n Command action e extended p primary partition (1-4) p Partition number (1-4): 1 First cylinder (1-30515, default 1): <em><strong><enter></strong></em> Using default value 1 Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-30515, default 30515): <strong><em><enter></em></strong> Using default value 30515 Command (m for help): |
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Command (m for help): w The partition table has been altered! Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table. Syncing disks. [root@quetzalcoatl ~]# |
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[root@quetzalcoatl ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdl1 mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006) Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 30654464 inodes, 61277926 blocks 3063896 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 Maximum filesystem blocks=0 1871 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 16384 inodes per group <strong>Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872</strong> Writing inode tables: done Creating journal (32768 blocks): done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done This filesystem will be automatically checked every 24 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override. [root@quetzalcoatl ~]# |
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[root@quetzalcoatl ~]# mkdir /mnt/250GB && mount -t ext3 /dev/sdl1 /mnt/250GB rw [root@quetzalcoatl ~]# |
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[root@quetzalcoatl ~]# nano /etc/fstab # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details LABEL=/1 / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/boot1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 LABEL=SWAP-hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb120 ext3 rw /dev/sdi1 /mnt/sdi250 ext3 rw /dev/sdj1 /mnt/sdj80 ext3 rw /dev/sdk1 /mnt/sdk120 ext3 rw <strong>/dev/sdl1 /mnt/sdl250 ext3 rw</strong> /dev/fd0 /media/floppy1 auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,utf8,managed 0 0 /dev/sdd /media/cdrom auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0 /dev/sdc /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0 [root@quetzalcoatl ~]# mount -a [root@quetzalcoatl ~]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3 17G 15G 1.8G 90% /<br />/dev/sda1 485M 52M 408M 12% /boot > none 506M 0 506M 0% /dev/shm /dev/sdb1 111G 97G 8.3G 93% /mnt/sdb120 /dev/sdi1 230G 216G 2.6G 99% /mnt/sdi250 /dev/sdj1 74G 67G 2.8G 97% /mnt/sdj80 /dev/sdk1 111G 100G 4.9G 96% /mnt/sdk120 <strong>/dev/sdl1 231G 188M 219G 1% /mnt/sdl250 [root@quetzalcoatl ~]# </strong> |
Troubleshooting
How to test
- Please rerun the commands in Step 6 if you have trouble or visit us on IRC on Freenode in #centos
- You may be wondering why a 250GB disk with nothing on it shows as 219GB. This space is taken by the filesystem journal. The journal is important for data integrity, it is normal for this percentage of space to be “missing” from any drive with an ext3 filesystem.
- Command overview:
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df - Displays total disk usage for mounted filesystems.<br />example: user1@foo ]$ df -h (this command displays the used/free space ratio on all currently mounted filesystems.)<br /><br />fdisk - Fdisk is a powerful disk partitioning utility.<br />example: root@foo ]# fdisk -l (this command lists the currently detected partitions and partition types. Use the <br />man page to understand the full scope of this very useful and powerful command.)<br /><br />mount - Mount a filesystem. see also: man umount.<br />example: root@foo ]# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdk3 /mnt/foo (this command mounts partition 3 on the hard disk /dev/sdk <br />on /mnt/foo where the user can then access it with the proper rwx permissions. automounting filesystems can be <br />taken care of in /etc/fstab) <br /> |
Interesting reading:
The Linux Documentation Project
More Information
Disclaimer
We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #centos on irc.freenode.net
Added Reading:
Last Modified: 22 Apr, 2020 at 16:33:30