Problem : You have Linux installed on your system with one hard disk. Now you got space requirement for that you manage to get one extra disk and you want to use that disk.
Solution :
1. Shutdown the system. pull out the power cable, attach new disk to the system, start the system after putting power cable back.
2. When you run the fdisk -ll command this will show you the following output
$ fdisk -ll
Disk /dev/sda: 71.9 GB, 71999422464 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 8753 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 4475 35841015 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 4476 8753 34363035 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 300.0 GB, 300000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36472 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
Above output shows that earlier i had one disk of size 73GB on which Red hat Linux is installed. Now i have attached 300 GB disk to my system and want to use it as a partition.
3. To create partition execute ‘fdisk /dev/sdb ‘ this command give you another prompt.
type ‘m’ to display the help for fdisk
type ‘n’ to add new partition
type ‘e’ for the extended partition #you can create the primary partition by typing ‘p’
prompt will ask for the partition number : type 1
Now prompt will ask for partition size. You can specify the partition size. but the simple way is to have complete disk as the one partition so just press enter two time.
Press ‘p’ to see the partition details.
Command (m for help): p
Disk //dev/sdb: 300.0 GB, 300000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36472 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
//dev/sdb1 1 36472 292961308+ 5 Extended
now press ‘w’ to commit the above task.
4. Now we have the raw partition of 300GB. To use it in linux one need to create filesystem on it. use following command to do the same.
$ mkfs -t ext3 -c /dev/sdb # This will take some time depend on your disk size.
5. Now you have the 300GB partition with ext3 filesystem on it. To use this disk/partition mount it on your system. for this create one directory
$ mkdir /NewDisk
6. Mount the /dev/sdb on /NewDisk. using
$ mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /NewDisk
or you can put this entry in fstab so that every time you start system /dev/sdb get mounted.
add following line in /etc/fstab
/dev/sdb /virtual2 ext3 defaults 1 2
then run $mount /dev/sdb
That’s all you got 300GB space on your space.
$ df -h
/dev/sdb 276G 20G 242G 8% /virtual2
