Partitions and disks

[mintymcmintface]

I have 2 physical HD's , 1x 250 GB SSD & 1x 1TB hd. I recently installed mint18.2 and I found that I was unable to transfer files to the 1TB disk that I wanted to use for storage and got a "no rights" error.

Looking at my configuration it looks like mint is installed on dev/sdb . Not a huge issue but I would have preferred it to be dev/sda. If there is a way to change now I would like to do so.

The more pressing issue is that the drive I want to store files on dev/sda1(1TB hd) shows that 14.1 GB are "used" already and I don't have rights to store files on it.

[kc1di]

Hello mintymcmintface and Welcome to Linux Mint,

Sounds like maybe two things going on one is that disc #2 was never added to the systems /etc/fstab file. which controls which discs are started at boot and determines their privileges.
2. the partitioning may not have been done completely for both discs.
Could you go to a terminal and enter this command and post the output here:

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

(note -l is lower case L not one)
also post the contents of your /etc/fstab file.
This should give us enough info to get it fixed.
Of course if you do not have a lot of valuable info on the system yet you can always reinstall and select other at the partitioning page and carefully repartition your drives making sure that drive 2 is partitioned and mount at boot time.
good luck.

[mintymcmintface]

Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 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: 54F86EB3-C87E-4741-9475-7B9628F17846

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1953523711 1953521664 931.5G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sdb: 232.9 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 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: A27E89A9-F995-48B8-86C4-2945D800AAE9

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
/dev/sdb2 1050624 471848959 470798336 224.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3 471848960 488396799 16547840 7.9G Linux swap




Disk /dev/sdc: 931.5 GiB, 1000204885504 bytes, 1953525167 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 33553920 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xb4809241

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1 8192 1953525166 1953516975 931.5G c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
m@m-System-Product-Name ~ $ sudosudo fdisk -l
sudosudo: command not found
m@m-System-Product-Name ~ $ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 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: 54F86EB3-C87E-4741-9475-7B9628F17846

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1953523711 1953521664 931.5G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sdb: 232.9 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 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: A27E89A9-F995-48B8-86C4-2945D800AAE9

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
/dev/sdb2 1050624 471848959 470798336 224.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3 471848960 488396799 16547840 7.9G Linux swap

[mintymcmintface]

oops it's looks like my external USB drive is also listed.

[mintymcmintface]

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sdb2 during installation
UUID=5f79d9d9-9ef8-4082-a57b-a06cab12a83e / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
UUID=0476-B521 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sdb3 during installation
UUID=a32def4d-dd40-4d82-a9ff-71c69adfcfd1 none swap sw

[mintymcmintface]

I left out the part in my original post ( to try to simplify my request) where I reformatted the 1TB drive after install in an effort to recover the 14.1 GB used space.

[mintymcmintface]

So I guess there is no solution to this problem. If I re-install how can I clear the 1 TB drive so that it wont show 14 GB used and the whole disk will be usable ?

[austin.texas]

So I guess there is no solution to this problem.

There does not seem to be a problem other than configuring your big hard drive - that certainly does not require a re-install.
Having the operating system on the SSD is the best strategy, so you are good there. We can help with the configuration of your big hard drive, Did you want to leave it as one big partition, or make it several partitions

[Mute Ant]

Wild guessing might help here...

A: Typically a drive specification uses decimal measure and an OS uses binary measure. 1TB is 10^12 bytes which is 931GiB.
+
B: Ext4 reserves 5% of the free space for the root user, Linux, to keep files defragmented and to stop an ordinary user from stuffing the drive full. That's 46GiB 'used' even though it's not obvious what it's used for.
=
C: Formatting a 1TB drive as a single partition of ext4, you might see a free-space report of 885GiB and there's nothing wrong at all.

[mintymcmintface]

Thanks for your replies. Right now my 2nd drive is unusable due to the no rights error. I would like to use it for storage so unless there is a good reason to subdivide it into smaller partitions I was thinking of making a single partition on it.

Also I have a question about resizing the swap partition on the SSD drive. I have 8GB of Ram so I don't think the swap partition would be getting much use. Does it need to be 7.9 GB? Would it make any sense to change the size?

[WharfRat]

mintymcmintface,

Create a folder in media with sudo mkdir /media/sda
Then mount the partition with sudo mount /dev/sda /media/sda
Then paste back ls -lhd /media/sda

[austin.texas]

Also I have a question about resizing the swap partition on the SSD drive. I have 8GB of Ram so I don't think the swap partition would be getting much use. Does it need to be 7.9 GB? Would it make any sense to change the size?

I can offer some thoughts on the swap.
I have the same configuration as you do. I have a 120GB SSD with the operating system, and I have a 1TB hard drive for my personal files. And, I also have 8GB of RAM, as you do.
With 8GB swap is rarely used, under normal circumstances, unless you want to hibernate - in which case you would want slightly more than 8GB swap.

In the past, I have operated with no swap partition at all, and did not encounter any problem. I do install the swapspace program, just to have it covered:

Code: Select all

apt install swapspace

Package: swapspace
Description: dynamic swap space manager
Small, stable system add-on that continuously and automatically adapts
available virtual memory space to your actual memory needs. Claims disk space
for use as swap space when needed; frees it up for use by the filesystem when
not needed.

[mintymcmintface]

mintymcmintface,

Create a folder in media with sudo mkdir /media/sda
Then mount the partition with sudo mount /dev/sda /media/sda
Then paste back ls -lhd /media/sda

Thanks for your reply. I ran the first command to make the directory but get this output when using the mount command ..

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$ sudo mount /dev/sda /media/sda
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error

       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail or so.

I then ran the dmesg I tail command if it is of any use.

Code: Select all

dmesg | tail
[ 9321.667320] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[ 9446.693560] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[ 9571.798696] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[ 9696.904546] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[ 9822.008894] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[ 9947.054192] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[10072.159920] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[10197.264352] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[10322.369598] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 
[10447.434926] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:84:94:8c:53:f4:d2:08:00 SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 

[WharfRat]

Sorry, my mistake - it should be sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/sda