Mounting a hard drive (beginner)

Question

I'm trying to mount my two harddrives (sdb and sdc) on Ubuntu 18.04

    $ sudo fdisk -l  

    Disk /dev/sda: 111.8 GiB, 120040980480 bytes, 234455040 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 843403B2-BF09-43A4-8B53-A44D8FAEF693

Device       Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1     2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/sda2  1050624 234452991 233402368 111.3G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sdb: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 9924BB77-E1D6-4E03-852F-454F360F6F41

Device     Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdb1   2048 5860532223 5860530176  2.7T Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sdc: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 16696FCE-133A-47CC-8CDB-BD59002A6A24

$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
└─sda2   8:2    0 111.3G  0 part /
sdb      8:16   0   2.7T  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   0   2.7T  0 part 
sdc      8:32   0   2.7T  0 disk 

'sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media' doesn't seem to work and gives me the error '/dev/sdb1 is not a block device.'. How do I mount it?

Answer 1

Welcome to the StackExchange!

First of all, you would need to format or add at least one partition to the newly added hard drives.

This can be accomplished by either using the terminal with fdisk type this to select the first hard drive you mentioned:

$ fdisk /dev/sdb

Type ‘n’ to create a new partition.

Specify where you would like the partition to end and start. You can set the number of MB of the partition instead of the end cylinder. For example: +1000M

Type ‘p’ to view the partition, and type ‘w’ to save the partition.

Run the command:

$ partprobe

This will allow your OS to detect the new partition table. If it still does not detect the partition table, you might need a reboot.

Then format the newly created partition with mke2fs this is used to create an ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystem, usually in a disk partition. See the mke2fs(8) manual page for more details.

# mkfs.ext4 -L myHDD /dev/sdb1

Then create a directory to mount the partition to:

# mkdir -p /mnt/media

then mount(8) the newly created partition to the newly created directory:

# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/media

then run the command lsblk(8):

$ lsblk -f

NAME    FSTYPE   LABEL                UUID                          MOUNTPOINT
sda
└─sdb1 ext4     myHDD     56adc99b-a61e-46af-aab7-a6d07e504652   /mnt/media

In order to make the partition automatically mount every time you boot your system you would need to add the newly created partition to your fstab(5) file.

/etc/fstab

 device        dir          type            options        dump   fsck
/dev/sdb1         /            ext4          noatime          0      1
/dev/sdb2         none         swap          defaults         0      0
/dev/sdb3         /home        ext4          noatime          0      2

or you could use a GUI like gparted which basically does all of the above with a couple of mouse clicks if you're not comfortable using the terminal.