second drive problems

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Kommy000

second drive problems

Post by Kommy000 »

Hi there.
I was wondering if anybody can explain to me in simple english on how to install second drive.
I have 2 sata drives. ONe is 80 gig one just for OS and I installed mint with no problems what so ever on it.
I installed second Sata drive which is 320 which will have all of my media, music and movies etc.
This is my home theatre pc
Now I always was a windows guy, so usually when I installed second drive in windows, I just had to format it and its done.

So I fired up Gparted utility and it found the second drive and I created a ext2 partintion on it.
My first drive identified as /dev/sda and it has default 3 partitions which is fine.
Second drive identifed as /dve/sdb with one partition on it called /dev/sdb1 and it is ext2 file system.

So now if it was windows I would go to computer link on my desktop and will see the drive. Well... I do not see it. All I see is my floppy , CD and file system which is my first drive.
What is the next step??? Am I missing something, do I have to do some magical terminal commands. Please or please explain it to me in simple plain english if possible. I guess I just got used to easy hard drive installation in windows, this setup confuses me a little bit.
Thank you guys

P.S.
I tried now to run mount command in terminal and this is what I saw:
can't find /dev/sdb1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

I tried going to /etc/fstab and these are the contents of that file:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=9f3face7-27f9-4a7d-bcd5-4fdfa954b635 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=78c206d9-5521-4394-a1e9-091ab88d63de none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec 0 0

Am I supposed to type it in manually in those files??? and what the heck to I type?? Easier way to do this?
Thanks
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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newW2
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Re: second drive problems

Post by newW2 »

Open a terminal and enter:

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sudo mkdir /media/sdb1
Then in a terminal enter:

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sudo gedit /etc/fstab
This will open your fstab file in a text editor. Save it as fstab_old.
Now in terminal again enter:

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sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Your fstab file is again open and ready for editing.

Now I would get rid of the UUID identifiers in fstab. Using device names are preferable in my opinion, and they will save you from UUID hell. So, I would edited your existing fstab file as follows.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec 0 0

Save the fstab file, and reboot. Mint should detect the drive now.
Lantesh

Re: second drive problems

Post by Lantesh »

I would change one thing from what newW2 has advised. Don't delete the UUID information. Just put a # sign in front of each UUID line of information. The # sign comments the line out, basically rendering it ineffective. Then just add the info he gave you for each partition underneath the commented out lines.
Kommy000

Re: second drive problems

Post by Kommy000 »

Ok , thank you guys for all your help.
I ended up reformatting and starting all over and followed all your directions. Now I see sdb1 shortcut on my desktop, also it shows up now when I click on "computer link" next to all of my cdroms and floppies and filesystem.
Here is a big problem, I can not create any folders on it, seems like I do not have any permissions. I can view the contents. The only folder I see inside that drive is lost and found , I cant create folders nothing.

Also for some reason it shows 15 gigs occupied on it. I mean I understand if some files are on it after the format but 15 gigs on something that is supposed to be 320 gigs, Linux sees 298 gigs and now it shows 278 gigs?
What the heck is going on.

But fine, if this is the only way to do this, I guess I can live with it, but I can't use that drive!
I can not write anything on it. I right clicked on it and it shows in permissions - owner as root and I can not change it since it tells me I do not have administrator priveleges.

I've just done a simple install, there is only one user account on it, install was done default without creating a root access as recommended by installation process. What am I supposed to do now??

Can somebody again tell me in plain english on how to solve this last problem and maybe once I'm able to use this drive to dump my files - maybe find out where the heck the 15 gigs went to??
Please help!

Thanks again... :oops:
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newW2
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Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:24 am
Location: USA

Re: second drive problems

Post by newW2 »

This post isn't the exact match to your question but the link there should help answer the question on permissions for the second drive.

Or if you like a short version:
As discussed here wrt adding a second Hdd and Linking it to home

Re-writing the post to make it genaric (I hope):
I tried editing fstab and the drive would mount, but it's owned by root and I can't use it.

Create a sub-directory on it and then give that sub-directory to your normal user account, e.g.

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sudo mkdir /path to new drive or partition/sub-dir name
Then give this new sub-directory the same permissions as your current home directory:

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sudo chown -R your_desktop_username:your_desktop_username path/to/new/HD/sub-directory
Then inside your own home directory, you can create a symbolic link:

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ln -s /path/to/new/HD/sub-directory /home/your_desktop_username/more-space
This would give you a sub-directory "more-space" inside your current home directory. From here onwards it's easy; just fill that other disk with whatever you wish.
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