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My Dell Vostro 3491 came with 1TB HDD and 256 SSD. Ubuntu was installed on the SSD and I can use the drive for storing and accessing files. But I am unable to access the HDD.

From the disk utilities, it seems my HDD is on standby (displaying ZZZ).

Using sudo fdisk -l I found my HDD is marked as /dev/sda and no partitions.

I tried mounting it using sudo /mount /dev/sda /media/HDD but getting an error mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

What is the actual problem and how to solve it?

Do I need to create partition of /dev/sda ? Why?

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    Do you want to know how to mount a drive, where to find it in /dev and/or how to format it beforehand?
    – FelixJN
    Sep 14, 2020 at 11:41
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    Have you tried creating and formatting partitions within /dev/sda (with GNOME Disk or GPartEd) before trying to mount them ?
    – breversa
    Sep 14, 2020 at 15:27

1 Answer 1

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Sorted this out. I had to format the HDD and then mount it as:

sudo mkdir /media/HDD
sudo mount /dev/sda /media/HDD
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    NO, you want partitions like sda1, not a drive like sda. You may not be able to remount as almost all tools expect partitions. and you want gpt partitions, not 35 year old MBR(msdos) partitions. You can also use gparted but must change default partitioning first. Select gpt under device, advanced over msdos(MBR) default partitioning before starting. gparted & fdisk instructions: help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingANewHardDrive & help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition/…
    – oldfred
    Sep 15, 2020 at 14:22
  • The command sudo lshw -C disk does not show up anything!
    – Arindam Ghosh
    Sep 15, 2020 at 16:09

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